
afe .'j" j.^J i Lafcy * sc3 ** --, 






SHAKESPEARE'S 
ENGLAND 



BY 
WILLIAM WINTER 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1910 



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Copyright, 1892, 1910, by 
WILLIAM WINTER 



All Bights Reserved 



©C1.A2: L32S 



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TO 

My Beloved Daughter-In-Law 

ELSIE LESLIE WINTER 

With Homage For Her Beautiful Character 

And Gratitude For Her Devoted Affection 

I Dedicate These Memorials 

Of Storied Scenes And Happy Hours 

In The Old World 



To twine her name with something that may live 

I trace it here, and consecrate this page 
To all her love has given or could give 

To glad the twilight of my pensive age, — 
The voice of glee, the tender word of cheer, 

The gentle smile, so radiant and so kind, 
The rippling laugh, the sympathetic tear, 

And the sweet influence of a noble mind. 






CONTENTS 



CnAPTER 








PAGE 


I. 


The Voyage 21 


II. 


Up to London 






31 


III. 


The Beauty of England 






38 


IV. 


The Abbey and the Tower 






50 


V. 


Literary Shrines of London 






60 


VI. 


The Palace of Westminster 






71 


VII. 


London Rambles 






78 


VIII. 


A Glimpse of Windsor . 






91 


IX. 


Westminster Abbey 






102 


X. 


Old Churches of London 






115 


XI. 


A Haunt of Edmund Kean 






131 


XII. 


Warwick and Kenilworth 






140 


XIII. 


First View of Stratford . 






149 


XIV. 


The Home of Shakespeare 






164 


XV. 


A Glimpse of Tewkesbury 






227 


XVI. 


London Antiquities 






236 


XVII. 


Relics of Byron 






248 


XVIII. 


Highgate and Coleridge 






257 


XIX. 


Barnct Bat tie-Field 






265 


XX. 


Stoke-Pogis and Gray . 






271 


XXI. 


A Glimpse of Ely . 






281 


XXII. 


Stratford Revisited 






293 


XXIII. 


Haunted Warwickshire . 






307 


XXIV. 


First View of Canterbury 






325 


XXV. 


A Borrower of the Night 






333 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Chancel of Holy Trinity Church, Strat- 
ford-upon-Avon (grave of Shakespeare) Frontispiece 

St. Paul's Cathedral, London . Facing Page 32 

The Globe Theatre, London, in 

Shakespeare's Time ..." "36 
From an Old Print 

The Tower of London ..." "52 

Crosby Place, London ..." "72 

Windsor Castle — the East Terrace . " " 92 

Windsor Castle— from the Park . " " 100 

Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey " " 106 

Westminster Abbey . . . " "112 

Interior of St. Margaret's Church, 

Westminster " " 120 

St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate . " " 122 

St. Margaret's and Westminster 

Abbey " « 128 

Edmund Kean as Sir Giles Over- 
reach ....." " 134 

The Ruins of Kenilworth Castle . " " 146 

The Shakespeare Church (Holy 

Trinity), Stratford-upon-Avon . " " 162 

Shakespeare's Birthplace, Henley 

Street, Stratford-upon-Avon . " " 172 

From an Old Print 
9 



10 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



William Shakespeare . 

From Martin Droeshoufs Engrav- 
ing in the First Folio 

Charlecote House, near Stratford . 

Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee The- 
atre at Stratford 

From an Old Print 

Trinity Church, Stratford, from the 
Shakespeare Memorial 

William Shakespeare . 

From the Bust by Gerard Jonson, 
" Tombe-Maker," in Stratford 
Church 

Compton-Wynyates, Warwickshire . 

Temple Bar, London (1877) 

Lord Byron .... 

From the Painting by Phillips, 

at N etc stead 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
Stoke-Pogis Church 
Oak and Beeches, Burnham Wood . 
Tomb of Thomas Gray, Stoke-Pogis 
Churchyard .... 

The Hathaway Cottage at Shottery 

Canterbury Cathedral . 

Richard the Third, King of England 

From the Painting on Board at 

Kensington Palace 



Facing Page 178 



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192 


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204« 


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214 


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220 



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232 


t 


a 


240 




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254 




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260 




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272 




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276 




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280 




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300 




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326 




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330 



PREFACE 

Before submitting this book to my readers in its 
present form I have rewritten a considerable part of 
it and carefully revised the rest. The chapters have 
been arranged in a new sequence, so as to make them 
suggestive of a practical, pleasurable line of travel, 
and much material not before included in previous edi- 
tions of Shakespeare's England has been introduced. 
Scenes that have soothed and elevated the mind are 
fondly remembered, and it was with affection and grati- 
tude that I wrote this book, many years ago, when I 
had seen England for the first time (1877), and when 
it was easily possible for me to feel and to express 
the ardent enthusiasm of youth. The spirit of these 
sketches is sympathetic, not critical, and perhaps it 
is the quality of sympathy in them that has caused 
the reading public to receive them with so much and 
such long-continued favor. The first publication of 
them, in book form, was effected, under the title of 
the trip to England, in 1879. Two years later that 
book, revised and augmented, was published in a new 
form, with illustrative pictures from the hand of my 

11 



12 PREFACE 

life-long friend, the great comedian, Jefferson. In 
1883 a book of mine appeared, called English rambles, 
containing additional sketches of travel in England. 
Each of those volumes was received with a practical 
public approbation all the more pleasing because it 
was unexpected. So general and so cordial, indeed, 
was the favor bestowed on my English sketches that 
I was encouraged to collect and incorporate them in 
a single volume, which, in 1888, was published, in 
Edinburgh, by my honored old friend David Douglas, 
under the title of Shakespeare's England, — a title 
chosen for the reason that much of the writing relates 
to Stratford-upon-Avon, and to other places in War- 
wickshire associated with Shakespeare, while all of it 
aims to portray, or at least to suggest, the ideal Eng- 
land which has been created by her Poetry, of which 
Shakespeare is the soul and fountain-head. 

Long after the publication of Shakespeare's Eng- 
land / learned that this title had been used (1856) 
by a charming English writer, George Walter Thorn- 
bury (deceased), to designate his book descriptive of 
the physical condition of England in Shakespeare's 
time. If I had known of the earlier employment of 
the fanciful title I should not have chosen it, but after 
my book had been widely circulated it seemed un- 
advisable to change its name, while to do so nozv would 



PREFACE 13 

be, — notwithstanding that extensive alterations and 
additions have been made, — an injustice to the book- 
buying 'public. Mention of the coincidence of title was 
duly made, in my Preface to the work, at the first 
opportunity. In 1892 Messrs. Macmillan Sf Company, 
now The Macmillan Company, published Shakespeare's 
England in America, and, later, in Great Britain. 
Under the name which it now bears it has passed 
through more than twenty-five printings. Many thou- 
sand copies of these sketches have been purchased, and 
m a long literary experience no incident has afforded 
me so much gratification as I have derived from the 
deeply sympathetic expressions of approval of their 
spirit which have been addressed to me from many 
readers, almost all of them personally strangers, in 
all parts of the English-speaking world. 

In this revision, intended to be final, of a labor which 
has been, essentially, one of love, I have, while co- 
ordinating the substance and, as I hope, improving 
the form, endeavored to preserve that liveliness of sen- 
sibility and ardor of feeling which characterized these 
sketches as originally written, and which, naturally, 
were prompted by the first view of places that reading 
and imagination, long before they were seen, had en- 
deared to a reverent student of the history and litera- 
ture of England. I have also sought, while eliminating 



14 PREFACE 

repetition, to express, wherever essential, the different 
moods and emotions awakened, in the same observers 
mind, by different visits to the same place. The physi- 
cal aspect of England has undergone some change 
since the bright days when first I mused in its temples 
and loitered in its rosy lanes, and some change, like- 
wise, has occurred in its social condition; yet I believe 
that readers will find some pleasure still, in rambling 
with me through the verdurous, fragrant pathways of 
an earlier and more peaceful time. In descanting on 
the rural loveliness, the romantic architectural remains, 
and the historic and literary associations of the beau- 
tiful old land, it was, and still is, my earliest wish to 
impart guidance and suggestion to other travellers, 
wishful to explore its opulent realms of poetry and 
view its relics and memorials of renown. There is no 
pursuit more fascinating, or, in a highly intellectual 
sense, more remunerative, since it serves to define and 
regulate knowledge, to broaden the mental vision, to 
ripen judgment and taste, and to fill the memory with 
ennobling recollections. 

I have often been assured by friends and strangers 
resident in Stratford-upon-Avon that a notable effect 
of the various publications of my English sketches 
has been a strong, recurrent stimulation of the tide 
of American travel toward the lovely little town, dream- 



PREFACE 15 

ing on Avons bank, and to the Shakespeare shrines 
of beautiful Warwickshire. It would be pleasant to 
accept with implicit belief such generous and cheering 
assurances: there is a possibility that my writings on 
this subject have directed some of my countrymen in 
the path of Shakespearean research and helped and 
cheered them in their exploration of the poet's home: 
but it is the irresistible allurement of association with 
that marvellous genius, far more than the potentiality 
of all the words of all the writers who have succeeded 
him, that has made Stratford the goal of reverent 
pilgrimage, not only from America but from all parts 
of the world. The style and method with which I 
revived and treated this theme, more than thirty years 
ago, have, however, elicited the tribute of imitation, — 
certain writers, following in my footsteps, having been 
pleased to paraphrase and occasionally to appropriate 
portions of what I have written. One book, an elabo- 
rate life of shakespeaee, the work of Major James 
Walter (deceased) , incorporates into its text, without 
credit, several passages of original description and re- 
flection, taken from my published sketches of the Shake- 
speare Country, and, — which is still more unjust, — 
quotes, and attributes to me, a prolix, ebullient narra- 
tive of a nocturnal visit to Anne Hathawai/s Cottage, 
— a narrative which I should be ashamed to have 



16 PREFACE 

written, which I did not write, and of which I had 
no knowledge till I saw it in Major Walter's book. 

Some of my later sketches of travel in England have 
been published under the title of gray days and gold, 
others under that of old shrines and ivy, while others 
have not, as yet, appeared in book form. All those 
later English sketches, revised and amplified, will pres- 
ently be incorporated into one volume, as a companion 
to this, to be called gray days and gold. The records 
of my fondly remembered rambles in Scotland, which, 
hitherto, have been published in brown heath and blue 
bells, and also those which are dispersed in various 
other places, will be gathered into one volume, to bear 
the title over the border. Persons who care for my 
writings will, perhaps, be pleased to know that I have 
long been under promise to supplement my English 
and Scotch books with a book about Ireland, and that 
I have nearly completed a volume of sketches of 
memorable places in America. If my life and strength 
endure, those projects, and several others, involving 
much labor, will be duly accomplished. 

Meantime, as a closing word, let me say that it is 
neither lack of sympathy with whatever of happiness 
exists around me nor lack of faith in the auspicious 
destiny of my native land and of mankind that has 
caused me, in celebrating the beauties of England, to 



PREFACE 17 

linger upon the hallowing associations of antiquity 
and to indicate the pathos more than the pageantry 
of human experience. Temperament is the controlling 
impulse of style and likewise of the drift of thought. 
I have thus written of England because she has filled 
my mind with beauty and impressed me with strangely 
commingled emotions of joy and sadness; and I doubt 
not that some memory of her "venerable ruins, her 
ancient temples, her rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, 
and her flower-spangled plains will blend with the last 
thoughts that glimmer through my brain, when the 
shades of the eternal night are falling and the ramble of 
life is done. W. W. 

New Brighton, New York, 
June 1, 1910. 



This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, 

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 

This other Eden, demi-paradise , 

This fortress built by Nature for herself, . . . 

This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . . 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, . . 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, 

Dear for her reputation through the world! 

Shakespeare. 



All that I saw returns upon my view; 
All that I heard comes back upon my ear; 
All that I felt this moment doth renew. 

Fair land; by Time's parental love made free, 

By Social Order's watchful arms embraced, 

With unexampled union meet in thee, 

For eye and mind, the present and the past; 

With golden prospect for futurity, 

If that be reverenced which ought to last. 

Wordsworth. 



THE PASSING BELL. 

(It is an accepted tradition in Stratford-upon-Avon that 
the bell of the Guild Chapel was tolled on the occasion of 
the death and also of the funeral of Shakespeare.) 

Sweet bell of Stratford, tolling slow, 
In summer gloaming's golden glow, 
I hear and feel thy voice divine, 
And all my soul responds to thine. 

As now I hear thee, even so 
My Shakespeare heard thee, long ago, 
When lone by Avon's pensive stream 
He wandered in his haunted dream: 

Heard thee, and far his fancy sped 
Through spectral caverns of the dead. 
And strove, and strove in vain, to pierce 
The secret of the universe. 

As now thou mournest didst thou mourn 
On that sad day when he was borne 
Through the green aisle of honied limes, 
To rest beneath the chamber'd chimes. 

He heard thee not, nor cared to hear! 
Another voice was in his ear, 
And, freed from all the bonds of men, 
He knew the awful secret then. 

Sweet bell of Stratford, toll, and be 
A sacred promise unto me 
Of that great hour when I shall know 
The path whereon his footsteps go. 

Stratford, September 14, 1890 



I. 

THE VOYAGE. 

The coast-line recedes and disappears, and 
night comes down upon the ocean. Into what 
dangers will the great ship plunge? Through 
what mysterious waste of waters will she 
make her viewless path? The black waves 
roll up around her. The strong blast fills 
her sails and whistles through her creak- 
ing cordage. Overhead the stars shine dimly 
amid the driving clouds. Mist and gloom 
close in the dubious prospect, and a strange 
sadness settles upon the heart of the voyager, 
who has left his home behind, and who now 
seeks, for the first time, the land, the homes, 
and the manners of the stranger. Thoughts 
and images of the past crowd thick upon his 
remembrance. The faces of absent friends rise 

before him, whom, perhaps, he is destined 

21 



22 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

nevermore to behold. He sees their smiles; he 
hears their voices; he fancies them by familiar 
hearthstones, in the light of the evening lamps. 
They are very far away now, and already it 
seems months instead of hours since the parting 
moment. Vain now the pang of regret for 
misunderstandings, nnkindness, neglect; for 
golden moments slighted and gentle courtesies 
left undone. He is alone upon the wild sea, — 
all the more alone because surrounded with 
unknown companions, — and the best he can 
do is to seek his lonely pillow with a prayer 
in his heart and on his lips. Never before did 
he so clearly know, never again will he so 
deeply feel, the uncertainty of human life and 
the weakness of human nature. Yet, as he 
notes the rush and throb of the vast ship and 
the noise of the breaking waves against her, 
and thinks of the mighty deep beneath and 
the broad and melancholy expanse that 
stretches away on every side, he cannot miss 
the impression, — grand, noble, and thrilling, — 
of human courage, skill, and power. For this 
ship is the centre of a splendid conflict. Man 



THE VOYAGE 23 

and the elements are here at war, and man 
makes conquest of the elements by using them 
as weapons against themselves. Strong and 
brilliant, the head-light streams over the boiling 
surges. Lanterns gleam in the tops. Dark 
figures keep watch upon the prow. The offi- 
cer of the night is at his post upon the bridge. 
Let danger threaten howsoever it may, it can- 
not come unawares; it cannot subdue, without 
a tremendous struggle, the brave minds and 
hardy bodies that are here arrayed to meet it. 
With this thought, perhaps, the weary voyager 
sinks to sleep; and this is his first night at 
sea. 

There is no tediousness of solitude to him 
who has within himself resources of thought 
and dream, the pleasures and pains of memory, 
the bliss and the torture of imagination. It is 
best to have few acquaintances, or none, on 
shipboard. Human companionship, at some 
times, and this is one of them, distracts by its 
pettiness. The voyager should yield himself 
to Nature now, and meet his soul face to face. 
The routine of everyday life is commonplace 



84 SUA K ESPEARES ENGLA M) 

enough, equally upon sea and land. Bui the 
ocean is a continual pageant, filling and sooth- 
ing the mind with unspeakable peaee. Never, 
in even the grandest words of poetry, was the 

grandeur oi' the sea expressed. Its vastness, 

freedom, joy, ami beauty overwhelm the mind. 
All things else Seem puny and momentary 
beside the life that this immense creation unfolds 
and inspires. Sometimes it shims in the sun, a 
wilderness o[' shimmering silver. Sometimes its 
long waves are blaek, smooth, glittering, and 
dangerous. Sometimes it seems instinct with 
a superh wrath, and its huge masses rise, and 
clash together, and break into erests of foam. 
Sometimes it is gray and quiet, as if in a sullen 
sleep. Sometimes the white mist broods upon 
it and deepens the sense o\' awful mystery by 
which it is forever enwrapped. At night its 
surging billows are furrowed with long streaks 
o\' phosphorescent tire: or, it may he. the waves 
roll gently, under the soft light o\' Stars; or 
all the waste is dim, save where, beneath the 
moon, a glorious pathway, broadening out to 
the far horizon, allures and points to heaven. 



THE VOYAGE 25 

One of the most exquisite delights of the voy- 
age, whether by day or night, is to lie upon 
the deck in some secluded spot, and look up at 
the tally tapering spars as they sway with the 
motion of the ship, while over them the white 
clouds floaty in ever-changing shapes, or the 
starry constellations move, in their eternal 
march. No need now of leading or of talk! 
The eyes are fed hy every object they behold. 
The great ship, with all her white wings spread, 
careening like a tiny sailboat, dips and rises, 
with sinuous, stately grace. The clank of her 
engines,— fit type of constant industry and 
purpose, — goes steadily on. The song of the 
sailors, — "Give me some time to blow the man 
down," — rises in cheery melody, full of audacious, 
light-hearted thoughtlessness, and strangely 
tinged with the romance of the sea. Far out 
toward the horizon many whales come sporting 
and spouting along. At once, out of the distant 
bank of cloud and mist, a little vessel springs 
into view, and with convulsive movement, tilt- 
ing up and down like the miniature barque 
upon an old Dutch clock, dances across the 



26 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

vista and vanishes into space. Soon a tempest 
bursts upon the calm; and then, safe-housed 
from the fierce blast and blinding rain, the voy- 
ager exults over the stern battle of winds and 
waters and the stalwart, undaunted strength 
with which his ship bears down the furious 
floods and stems the gale. By and by a quiet 
hour is given, when, met with the companions 
of his journey, he stands in the hushed cabin 
and hears the voice of prayer and the hymn of 
praise, and, in the pauses, a gentle ripple of 
waves against the ship, which now rocks lazily 
upon the sunny deep ; and, ever and anon, as she 
dips, he can discern through her open ports the 
shining sea and the wheeling and circling gulls 
that have come out to welcome her. 

Toward the middle of the night the ship 
comes to a pause, off the coast of Ireland, and, 
looking forth across the black waves and through 
rifts in the rising mist, I dimly see the blurred 
verge of that land of beauty and misery. A 
brilliant white light flashes, now and then, from 
the shore, and at intervals the mournful booming 
of a solemn bell floats over the sea. Soon is 



THE VOYAGE 27 

heard the rolling click of oars, and two or three 
shadowy boats glide past the ship, and hoarse 
voices hail and answer. A few stars are visible 
in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the land 
brings off, in fitful puffs, the fragrance of grass 
and clover, mingled with the salt odor of sea- 
weed and mossy rocks. There is a sense of 
mystery over the whole wild scene; but I realize 
now that the ocean has been traversed, that the 
long and lonely voyage is ended, and that, at 
last, I have come to the shores of the Old 
World, so long the goal of romantic desire. 

This traveller, when first he saw the coast 
of England, dim in the distance, felt, with 
a forlorn sense of loneliness, that he was a 
stranger; but when last he saw that coast he 
beheld it through a mist of tears and knew 
that he had parted from many cherished 
friends, many of the gentlest men and women 
upon the earth, and from a land henceforth as 
dear to him as his own. England is a country 
which to see is to love. As you draw near to 
her shores you are pleased at once with the 
air of careless finish and negligent grace that 



28 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

everywhere overhangs the prospect. Pictur- 
esque Fastnet, with its gaily painted tower, has 
been left behind. The grim, wind-beaten hills 
of Ireland have been passed, — hills crowned, 
here and there, with dark, fierce towers that 
look like strongholds of ancient bandit chiefs, 
and cleft by dim valleys that seem to promise 
endless treasures of fancy, hid in their som- 
bre depths. Morning comes, and it is off the 
noble crags of Holyhead, perhaps, that the voy- 
ager first observes with what a deft skill the hand 
of art has here moulded Nature's luxuriance 
into forms of seeming chance-born beauty; and 
from that hour, wherever in rural England the 
footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will 
behold little except gentle rustic adornment, that 
has grown with the grass and the roses — 
greener grass and redder roses than ever we 
see in our western world. In the English nature 
a spontaneous love of the beautiful is as fluent 
as the blowing of the summer wind. Portions 
of English cities, indeed, are hard and harsh 
and coarse enough to suit the most utilitarian 
taste; yet, even in those regions of dreary 



THE VOYAGE 29 

monotony, the national love of flowers will find 
expression, for, in many winning ways, the peo- 
ple beautify their homes and make their sur- 
roundings lovely. There is a tone of rest and 
home-like comfort even in murky Liverpool; 
and great magnificence is there, as well of archi- 
tecture and opulent living as of enterprise and 
action. 

"Towered cities" and "the busy hum of men," 
however, are soon left behind by the wise travel- 
ler in England. A time will come for them; 
but in his first sojourn there he soon discovers 
the two things that are utterly to absorb him, 
which cannot disappoint, and which are the ful- 
filment of all his dreams. These things are — 
the rustic loveliness of the land and the charm 
of its vital, splendid antiquity. The green lanes, 
the thatched cottages, the meadows glorious 
with wild-flowers, the little churches covered 
with dark-green ivy, the Tudor gables festooned 
with roses, the devious footpaths that wind 
across wild heaths and long and lonesome fields, 
the narrow, shining rivers, brimful to their 
banks and crossed here and there with gray, 



30 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

moss-grown bridges, the stately elms whose low- 
hanging branches droop over a turf of emerald 
velvet, the gnarled beech-trees "that wreathe 
their old, fantastic roots so high," the rooks that 
caw and circle in the air, the sweet winds that 
blow from fragrant woods, the sheep and the 
deer that rest in shady places, the pretty chil- 
dren who cluster round the porches of their 
cleanly, cosey homes, and peep at the wayfarer 
as he passes, the numerous and often brilliant 
birds that, at times, fill the air with music, the 
brief, light, pleasant rains that ever and anon 
refresh the landscape, — these are some of the 
everyday joys of rural England; and these are 
wrapped in a climate that makes life a serene 
ecstasy. Meantime, in rich valleys or on verdant 
slopes, many old castles and monasteries, ruined 
or half in ruins, allure the pilgrim's gaze, inspire 
his imagination, arouse his memory, and fill his 
mind. The pure romance of the past and the 
fine reality of the present are his banquet now; 
and nothing is wanting to the perfection of 
the feast. 



II. 

UP TO LONDON. 

Travellers who make the journey from 
Liverpool to London by the Midland Rail- 
way pass through the vale of Derby and skirt 
the stately Peak that Scott has described and 
romantically graced in his novel of "Peveril." 
It is, relatively, a wild and somewhat rugged 
country, but very beautiful. You see the 
storied Peak, in its delicacy of outline and its 
airy magnificence of poise, — the summit almost 
lost in the smoky haze, — and you wind through 
hillside pastures and meadow-lands that, here 
and there, are curiously intersected with low, 
zigzag stone walls; and constantly, as the scene 
changes, you catch glimpses of green lane and 
shining river; of dense copses that cast a cool 
shadow on the dewy, gleaming emerald sod; 
of long white roads that stretch away like 

31 



32 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

cathedral aisles and are lost beneath the leafy 
arches of elm and oak; of little church tow- 
ers embowered in ivy; of thatched cottages 
draped with roses; of dark ravines, luxuriant 
with a wild profusion of rocks and trees; and 
of golden grain that softly waves and whispers 
in the summer wind; while, all around, the 
grassy banks and glimmering meadows are 
radiant with yellow daisies, and with that won- 
derful scarlet of the poppy that gives a delicious 
glow of life and loveliness to the whole face 
of England. After some hours of such a 
pageant, — so novel, so fascinating, so fleeting, 
so stimulative of eager curiosity and poetic 
desire, — it is a kind of relief, at last, to emerge 
in the populous streets and among the grim 
houses of London, with its surging tide and 
turmoil of exultant life. How strange it seems 
— yet, at the same time, how familiar! There 
soars the great dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, 
with its golden cross that flashes in the sun. 
There stands the Victoria Tower, — fit emblem 
of the royalty of the sovereign whose name it 
bears. And there, less lofty but more august, 



UP TO LONDON 33 

rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is the 
great heart of the modern world, — the great 
city of our reverence and love. As the wan- 
derer writes these words he hears the plashing 
of the fountains in Trafalgar Square and the 
evening chimes that peal from the spire of 
St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and he knows him- 
self at the shrine of his youthful dreams. 

To the observant stranger in London few 
sights can be more impressive than those that 
illustrate the singular manner in which the 
life of the present encroaches upon the memo- 
rials of the past. The Midland Railway trains 
dash over what was once St. Pancras church- 
yard, — the burial-place of Mary Wollstone- 
craft, William Godwin, and many other Brit- 
ish worthies, — and passengers looking from the 
coaches can see the children of the neighbor- 
hood sporting among the few tombs that yet 
remain in that despoiled cemetery. Dolly's 
Chop-House, intimately associated with the 
wits of the reign of Queen Anne, has been 
destroyed. The ancient tavern of The Cock, 
immortalized by Tennyson, in his poem of 



34 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

"Will Waterproof's Monologue," is soon to 
disappear, — with its singular -wooden vestibule 
that existed before the time of the plague and 
escaped the great fire. On the site of Nor- 
thumberland House stands the Grand Hotel. 
The gravestones that formerly paved the pre- 
cincts of Westminster Abbey have been removed, 
to make way for grassy lawns intersected with 
pathways. In Southwark the engine-room of 
the brewery of Messrs. Barclay & Perkins occu- 
pies the site of the Globe Theatre, in which 
many of Shakespeare's plays were first pro- 
duced. One of the most venerable and beau- 
tiful churches in London, that of St. Bar- 
tholomew the Great, — a gray, mouldering 
temple, of the twelfth century, hidden away in 
a corner of Smithfield, — is desecrated by the 
irruption of an adjacent shop, the staircase 
hall of which breaks cruelly into the sacred 
edifice and impends above the altar. In one 
of many strolls, entering the churchyard of 
St. Paul's, Covent Garden, — the sepulchre of 
William Wyeherley, Robert Wilks, Charles 
Macklin, Joseph Haines, Thomas King, Sam- 



UP TO LONDON 35 

uel Butler, Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter, 
Dr. Arne, Thomas Davies, Edward Kynaston, 
Richard Estcourt, William Havard, and many 
other renowned votaries of literature and the 
stage, — I observed that workmen were build- 
ing a new wall to sustain the enclosure, and 
perceived that almost every gravestone in the 
cemetery had been removed and was propped 
against the adjacent houses. Those monuments, 
it was said, would be replaced; but it was 
impossible not to consider the chances of ludi- 
crous or painful error in a new mortuary 
deal. 

Facts such as these convey admonition that 
even the relics of the past are passing away, 
and that cities, unlike human creatures, may 
grow to be so old that at last they will become 
new. It is not wonderful that London should 
change its aspect from one decade to another, 
as the living surmount and obliterate the 
dead. Thomas Sutton's Charter-House School, 
founded in 1611, when Shakespeare and Ben 
Jonson were still writing, was reared upon 
ground in which several thousand corpses were 



36 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

buried, during the time of the Indian pestilence 
of 1348. Nine thousand new houses, it is said, 
are built in the great capital every year, and 
twenty-eight miles of new street are thus added 
to it. I drove for three hours through the 
eastern part of London without coming upon a 
trace of open fields. On the west, all the 
region from Kensington to Richmond is settled 
for most part of the way, while northward 
the city is stretching its arms toward Hamp- 
stead, Highgate, and tranquil, blooming Finch- 
ley. Truly the spirit of this age is in strong 
contrast with that of the time of King Henry 
the Eighth, when (1530), to prevent the increas- 
ing size of London, all new buildings were 
forbidden to be erected "where no former hath 
been known to have been." The march of 
improvement carries everything before it: even 
British conservatism is, at some points, giving 
way: and, noting the changes that are in 
progress, I am persuaded that those persons 
who would see what remains of the London 
of which they have read and dreamed, — the 
London of Betterton, Dryden, Pope, and Addi- 




i t i, ; i 5 



UP TO LONDON 37 

son, the London of Sheridan, Byron, and 
Edmund Kean, — will, as time passes, find more 
and more difficulty both in tracing the foot- 
steps of fame and encountering that sym- 
pathetic, reverent spirit which hallows the relics 
of genius and renown. Nothing is permanent. 
All things are subject to mutability. Rever- 
ence is repulsed by cynicism. Romance is 
chilled by ridicule. The holiest emotions of 
which human nature is capable are marred by 
the incessant pressure of care, or deadened 
by observation of the manifold evils of the 
world, or decayed by the silent encroachments 
of age. Much that is memorable, however, 
still remains, to reward the seeker for it, and 
those men and women ought to deem them- 
selves exceptionally blest who, retaining some- 
thing of the simplicity, trust, and ingenuous 
enthusiasm of youth, are able, even for a little 
time, to find delight in storied places, and to 
endow with any glamour of poetry the objects 
which they behold. 



III. 

THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 

It is not strange that Englishmen should 
be, as certainly they are, passionate lovers of 
their country, for their country is peaceful, 
gentle, and beautiful. Even in vast London, 
where practical life asserts itself with such 
prodigious force, the stranger is impressed, in 
every direction, with a sentiment of repose. 
This national sentiment seems to proceed in 
part from the antiquity of the social system 
here established, and in part from the affec- 
tionate nature of the English people. Here 
are finished towns, rural regions thoroughly 
cultivated and exquisitely adorned; ancient 
architecture, crumbling in slow decay; and a 
soil so rich and pure that, even in its idlest 
mood, it lights itself up with flowers, even 
as the face of a sleeping child lights itself up 

38 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 39 

with smiles. Here, also, are kindly manners, 
settled principles, many good laws and wise 
customs, — wise, because rooted in the ascer- 
tained attributes of human nature; and, above 
all, here is the practice of trying to live in a 
happy condition, instead of trying to make a 
noise about it. Here, accordingly, life is hal- 
lowed with the comfortable, genial, loving spirit 
of home. It would be possible to come into 
contact here with absurd forms and pernicious 
abuses, to observe absurd individuals, and to 
discover veins of sordid selfishness and of evil 
and sorrow; but the merits that first and most 
deeply impress the observer of England and 
English society are their potential, manifold 
sources of beauty, refinement, and peace. There 
are, indeed, grumblers. Mention has been made 
of a person who, even in heaven, would com- 
plain that his cloud was damp and his halo 
a misfit: perfection does not exist, anywhere: 
but the man who could not be happy in Eng- 
land, in as far, at least, as happiness depends 
upon external objects and influences, could 
not reasonably expect to be happy anywhere. 



40 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Heat is perceptible for an hour or two, on 
each summer day, but it causes no discomfort. 
Fog is understood to be, at all times, lurking 
in the Irish Sea and the English Channel, and 
waiting for November, when it will drift into 
town and grime all the new paint on the Lon- 
don houses. Meantime, the sky is softly blue 
and full of magnificent bronze clouds; the air 
is cool, and, in the environs of the city, is 
fragrant with the scent of new-mown hay; and 
the grass and trees in the parks, — those copious, 
preservatory lungs of London, — are green, dewy, 
sweet, and beautiful. Persons "to the manner 
born" call the season "backward," and com- 
plain that the hawthorn is less brilliant than 
in former seasons, but in fact, to the unfamiliar 
sense, this tree of odorous coral is exceptionally 
delicious. Nothing quite comparable with it is 
found in northern America, unless it be the 
elder of our wild woods, and even that, though 
equally fragrant, lacks equal charm of color. 
They use the hawthorn, or some kindred shrub, 
for hedges, in England, and their fields, in 
general, are not disfigured with fences. As you 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 41 

ride through the land you see miles and miles 
of meadow, intersected by these green and 
blooming hedgerows, which give the country 
a charm incommunicable by words. The green 
of the foliage, — enriched by an uncommonly 
humid air and burnished by the sun, — is per- 
fect, while the flowers bloom in such abundance 
that the whole realm is one glowing pageant. 
I saw, on the crest of a hill, near Oxford, a 
single ray of at least a thousand feet of scarlet 
poppies. Imagine that glorious dash of color 
in a green landscape lit by the afternoon sun! 
Nobody could help loving a land that wooes 
him with such beauty. 

English flowers are exceptional for sub- 
stance and pomp. The roses, in particular, — 
though many of them are of French breeds, — 
surpass all others. The statement may seem 
extravagant, but it is true, that these rich, 
firm, brilliant flowers affect you like creatures 
of flesh and blood. They are, in this respect, 
only to be described as like the bright lips 
and blushing cheeks of the handsome English 
women who walk among them and vie with 



42 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

them in health and loveliness. It is easy to 
perceive the source of those elements of warmth 
and splendor that are so conspicuous in the 
fabrics and denotements of English taste. It 
is a land of flowers. Even in busy parts of 
London the inhabitants decorate their houses 
with them, and set the sombre, fog-grimed 
fronts ablaze with scarlet and gold. Those are 
the prevalent colors, — radically so, for they 
have become national, — and, when placed 
against the black tint with which the climate 
stains the buildings, they have the advantage 
of a vivid contrast that augments their brill- 
iant effect. Much of London wears crape, 
variegated with a tracery of white, like lace 
upon a pall, and in some instances the com- 
bination is magnificent. There cannot be a 
grander artificial object than St. Paul's Cathe- 
dral, which is especially notable for this mys- 
terious blending of light and shade. It is to 
be deplored that a climate which can thus 
beautify should also destroy, but there can be 
no doubt that the stones of London are steadily 
defaced by the action of the damp atmos- 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 43 

phere, — as shown by the condition of the deli- 
cate carving on the Palace of Westminster. 
And yet, to judge the climate by a glittering 
July day, England is a land of sunshine as 
well as of flowers. Light comes before three 
o'clock in the morning, and it lasts, through 
a dreamy, lovely gloaming, till nearly ten 
o'clock at night. The morning sky is usually 
light blue, dappled with slate-colored clouds. 
A few large stars are visible then, lingering 
to outface the dawn. Cool winds whisper, and 
presently they rouse the great, sleepy, old elms; 
and then the rooks, which are the low come- 
dians of the air in this region, begin to caw; 
and then the sun leaps above the horizon, bring- 
ing in a day of golden, breezy cheerfulness and 
comfort. Sometimes the twenty-four hours drift 
past, as if in a dream of light and shadow, fra- 
grance and music. More than once, in a moonlit 
time, when there was scarce any darkness, I 
have lain awake all night, within a few miles of 
Charing Cross, listening, in sweet contentment, 
to the twitter of many birds, as soothing as 
the lapse of silver water in a woodland brook. 



44. SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Elements of discontent and disturbance vis- 
ible in English society are found, upon close 
examination, to be superficial. Underneath 
them there abides a sturdy, immutable, innate 
love of England. Such grumblings and bick- 
erings only indicate a process by which the 
body politic frees itself from headaches and 
fevers that embarrass the national health. The 
Englishman and his country are one, and when 
the Englishman complains against his country 
it is not because he believes that there is or 
can be found a better country elsewhere, but 
because his instinct of justice and order makes 
him crave perfection in his own. Institutions 
and principles with him are paramount to 
individuals, and individuals only possess impor- 
tance, and that conditional on abiding recti- 
tude, who are their representatives. Every- 
thing is done in England to promote the 
permanence and beauty of the home, and the 
permanence and beauty of the home, by a 
natural reaction, augment, in the English peo- 
ple, solidity of character and peace of life. 
They do not dwell in a perpetual fret and 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 45 

fume as to the acts, thoughts, and words of 
other nations: for the English there is little 
or no public opinion outside of their own land: 
they do not live for the sake of working, but 
they work for the sake of living; and, as the 
necessary preparations for living have long 
been completed, their country is as much at 
rest as it is possible for any country to be. 
That is the secret of England's continuous, all- 
pervading charm for the stranger, — the charm 
to soothe. 

The efficacy of endeavoring to make a coun- 
try a united, comfortable, and beautiful home 
for all of its inhabitants, binding every heart to 
the land by the same tie that binds every heart 
to the fireside, is something well worthy to be 
considered, equally by the practical statesman 
and the contemplative observer. That way, 
assuredly, lie the welfare of the human race 
and all the tranquillity that human nature, — 
warped as it is by the evil that only too sadly 
shows itself in every day's record of vice and 
crime, — will ever permit to the world. This 
endeavor has, through ages, been steadily pur- 



4*6 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

sued in England, and one of its results, which 
is also one of its indications, is the vast accumu- 
lation of home treasures in the city of London. 
The mere enumeration of them would fill large 
volumes. The description of them could not 
be completed in a lifetime. It was this copi- 
ousness of historic wealth and poetic associa- 
tion, combined with the flavor of character 
and the sentiment of repose, that bound the 
sturdy Dr. Johnson to Fleet Street and made 
the gentle Charles Lamb an inveterate lover 
of the town. Except it be to correct insular 
narrowness, there can be no need that the 
Londoner should travel. Glorious sights, 
indeed, await him, if he journeys no further 
away than Paris; but, aside from ostentation, 
luxury, gaiety, and excitement, Paris will give 
him nothing that he cannot find at home. The 
great Cathedral of Notre Dame will awe him; 
but not more than his own Westminster Abbey. 
The grandeur and beauty of the Madeleine 
will enchant him; but not more than the massive 
solemnity and stupendous magnificence of St. 
Paul's. The embankments of the Seine will 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 47 

satisfy his taste with their symmetrical solidity; 
but he will not deem them superior to the 
embankments of the Thames. The Pantheon, 
the Hotel des Invalides, the Luxembourg, 
the Louvre, the Tribunal of Commerce, the 
Opera House, — all these will dazzle and delight 
his eyes, arousing his remembrances of history 
and firing his imagination of great events and 
persons; but all these will fail to displace in his 
esteem the grand Palace of Westminster, so 
stately in its simplicity, so winning in its grace! 
He will ride through the exquisite Park of 
Monceau, one of the loveliest spots in Paris, 
and onward to the Bois de Boulogne, with its 
pomp of foliage, its romantic green vistas, its 
many winding avenues, its hillside hermitage, 
its cascades, and its affluent lakes, whereon the 
white swans beat the water with their joyous 
wings; but still his soul will turn, with unshaken 
love and loyal preference, to the sweetly sylvan 
solitude of the gardens of Kensington and 
Kew. He will marvel in the museums of the 
Louvre, the Luxembourg, and Cluny, and, pos- 
sibly, he will concede that of paintings, whether 



48 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

ancient or modern, the French display is more 
imposing than the English; but be will vaunt 
the British Museum as peerless in all the world, 
and he will pri/e bis National Gallery, with 
its originals of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gains- 
borough, and Turner, its tender, dreamy 
Murillos, and its dusky glories oi' Rembrandt. 
He will admire, at the Theatre Francais, the 
almost perfect photography characteristic of 
French acting; but he will reflect that Eng- 
lish dramatic art, if it sometimes lacks finish, 
often creates the effect of Nature; and he will 
certainly perceive that the famous playhouse is 
not comparable with either Her Majesty's 
Theatre or Covent Garden. He will luxuri- 
ate in the Champs Ely sees, in the superb 
Boulevards, in the glittering pageant of pre- 
cious jewels that blazes in the Rue de la Paix 
and the Palais Royal, and in that gorgeous 
panorama of shop- windows for which the 
French capital is famous and unrivalled; and 
be will not deny that, as to brilliancy of aspect, 
Paris is the most radiant of cities, the sapphire 
in the crown of Solomon. But, when all is 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 49 

seen, either that Louis the Fourteenth created 
or Napoleon Bonaparte pillaged, when he has 
taken his last walk in the gardens of the 
Tuileries, and, at the foot of the statue of 
Caesar, mused on that titanic strife of mon- 
archy and democracy of which France has 
been a continuous theatre, sated with the glitter 
of opulence and tired with the whirl of frivolous 
life, he will gladly and gratefully turn again to 
his sombre, mysterious, thoughtful, restful old 
London; and, like the Syrian captain, though 
in the better spirit of truth, declare that Abana 
and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are better 
than all the waters of Israel. I thought that 
life could have but few moments of content in 
store for me like the moment, — never to be 
forgotten, — when, in the heart of London, on 
a perfect June day, I lay upon the grass in 
the old Green Park, and, for the first time, 
looked up toward the towers of Westminster 
Abbey. 



IV. 

THE ABBEY AND THE TOWER. 

There is so much to be seen in London 
that the pilgrim is perplexed by what Dr. 
Johnson called "the multiplicity of agreeable 
consciousness," and knows not where to choose. 
One spot to which I have many times been 
drawn, and which the mention of Johnson 
instantly calls to mind, is the stately, solemn 
place in Westminster Abbey where that great 
man's ashes are buried. Side by side, under 
the pavement of the minster, within a few feet 
of earth, sleep Johnson, Garrick, Sheridan, 
Henderson, Dickens, Cumberland, Argyle, and 
Handel. Garrick's wife is buried in the same 
grave with her husband. Close by, some brass 
letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark 
the resting-place of Thomas Campbell. Not 
far off is the sepulchre of Macaulay, and the 

50 



ABBEY AND TOWER 51 

stroller through the nave treads upon the grave- 
stone of that astonishing old man Thomas Parr, 
who, living in the reigns of nine princes, 1483- 
1635, is said to have reached the great age of 
152 years. All parts of Westminster Abbey- 
impress the reverential mind. It is a strange 
experience and full of awe suddenly to find 
your steps upon the tombs of such illustrious 
men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan; and 
you come, with a thrill of more than surprise, 
upon such startling antiquity as the grave of 
Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick and Queen 
of King Richard the Third; but no single spot 
in the great cathedral can so enthrall the imagi- 
nation as that strip of storied stone beneath 
which Garrick and his compeers rest side by 
side. This writer, when first he visited the 
Abbey, found a chair beside the grave of John- 
son, and sat there to rest and muse. The let- 
ters on the stone are wearing away, but the 
memory of that noble champion of the pen can 
never perish, as long as the votaries of litera- 
ture love their art and honor the valiant genius 
that battled, through hunger, toil, and con- 



52 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

tumely, for its dignity and renown. It was a 
tender and right feeling that prompted the 
burial of Johnson close beside Garrick. They 
set out together to seek their fortune in the 
great city. They participated in the indulgence 
of youthful dreams of fame, in romantic ambi- 
tion, in quixotic plans, and in such affectionate 
feeling as comrades cherish and never forget. 
Each found eminence in a different way, and, 
although measurably parted afterward by the 
currents of fame and wealth, they were never 
sundered in friendship. It was fit they should, 
at last, be entombed together, under the most 
glorious roof that greets the skies of England. 
Fortune gave me an impressive first visit to 
the Tower of London. The sky lowered. The 
air was very cold. The wind blew with angry 
gusts. The rain fell, now and then, in a chill 
drizzle. The river was dark and sullen. If 
the spirits of the dead come back to haunt 
any place, they surely come back to haunt that 
one; and this was a day for their presence. 
One dark ghost seemed near, at every step, — < 
the ominous shade of the great and lonely 




y 

z 
- 

o 

I-} 

fa 
o 

o 

H 
H 



ABBEY AND TOWER 53 

Richard, Duke of Glo'ster. The little room in 
which the princes are said to have been mur- 
dered, by his command, was shown, and the 
oratory where King Henry the Sixth is sup- 
posed to have met a violent death, and the 
council chamber, in which Richard, after listen- 
ing, in ambush behind the arras, denounced 
the brilliant Hastings. The latter place is now 
used as an armory; but the same ceiling covers 
it that echoed the bitter invective of Glo'ster 
and the rude clamor of his soldiers, when their 
dismayed victim was plucked forth and dragged 
downstairs, to be beheaded on "a timber-log" 
in the courtyard. The Tower is a place for 
such deeds, and you almost wonder that they 
do not happen still, in its gloomy chambers. 
The room in which, as most of the historians 
declare, the princes were killed, is particularly 
grisly in aspect. It is an inner room, small 
and dark. A grated window in one of its 
walls fronts a window on the other side of the 
passage by which you approach it. This is 
but a few feet from the floor. The entrance 
was indicated to a secret passage by which 



54, SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

this room was once accessible from the foot 
of the tower. In one gloomy stone chamber 
the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large 
glass case. One of the royal relics is a crown 
of velvet and gold that was made for the 
lovely, wretched queen, Anne Boleyn. You 
can pass across the courtyard and pause on 
the spot where that miserable woman was 
beheaded, and you can walk thence, over the 
ground that her last trembling footsteps trav- 
ersed, to the round tower in which, at the 
close, she lived. I saw that direful chamber, 
in the Beauchamp tower, on the walls of which 
are thickly scrawled the names and emblems 
of prisoners who therein suffered confinement 
and lingering agony, nearly always ending in 
death; but I saw no sadder place than Anne 
Boleyn's tower. It seemed in the strangest 
way eloquent of mute suffering: it seemed to 
exhale grief and to plead for love and pity. 
Yet — what woman ever had greater love than 
was lavished on her? And what woman ever 
trampled more royally and recklessly upon 
human hearts? 



ABBEY AND TOWER 55 

The Tower is put to commonplace uses now, 
and exhibited in a commonplace manner. They 
use the famous White Tower, — the massive crea- 
tion of Gundulf, and, among all known build- 
ings, the most wonderful for historic, poetic, 
tragic association, — as a store-house for arms, 
and it contains about 100,000 guns, besides 
a large collection of old armor and weapons. 
The arrangement of those implements was 
made by J. R. Planche (b. February 27, 1796, 
d. May 29, 1880), the brilliant dramatic 
author, — eminent also, in his day, as an anti- 
quarian and a herald. The effigies and gear 
of chivalry are displayed in such a way that 
the observer can trace the changes which war 
fashions have undergone through the reigns 
of successive sovereigns of England, from the 
earliest period until now. A suit of mail worn 
by King Henry the Eighth is shown, and also 
a suit worn by King Charles the First, and both 
figures are notably suggestive of life and char- 
acter. In a room on the second floor of the 
White Tower they keep many gorgeous ori- 
ental weapons, and they show the cloak in which 



56 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

General Wolfe died, on the Plains of Abraham. 
It is a gray garment, to which the active moth 
has given assiduous attention. The most 
impressive objects to be seen there, however, 
are the block and axe that were used in 
beheading the insurgent lords, Kilmarnock, 
Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of the 
Pretender, in 1746. The block is made of 
ash, and there are large, sinister dents in it, 
showing that it was made for use and not for 
ornament. It is harmless enough now, and I 
was allowed to place my head upon it, in the 
manner prescribed for the victims of decapita- 
tion. Many of those relics and conspicuous 
objects of gloom have been disposed in a dif- 
ferent way, since first they were seen by me. 
An official guide, called "a beef-eater," 
ludicrously apparelled, in trousers trimmed with 
red, a dark tunic, and a low-crowned black 
velvet hat embellished with bows of blue and 
red ribbon, conducts the visitor to such parts 
of the Tower as are customarily shown, and 
drops a profusion of "h's," from point to 
point, together with information which some- 



ABBEY AND TOWER 57 

times is more surprising than correct. One of 
those worthies, innocently repeating a ground- 
less tradition, indicated to me a little cell, on 
the second floor of the White Tower, as hav- 
ing once been occupied by that illustrious 
prisoner, Sir Walter Raleigh, and caused me 
not only to muse, but to descant in print, on 
the exemplary fortitude of the man who could 
endure, in that sombre solitude, a captivity of 
many years, and turn it to the best result by 
writing his quaint, philosophic, eloquent, aston- 
ishing fragment, the "History of the World." 
Raleigh, in fact, was never imprisoned in the 
White Tower, and the best testimony is that 
his "History" was written during his residence 
in the Bloody Tower and in the Garden House. 
Dixon's fascinating book on the subject of 
the famous fortress mentions that he was four 
times imprisoned: first, in the Brick Tower; 
second, in the Bloody Tower; third, in the 
same, till moved to the Garden House; and 
fourth, in the Wardrobe Tower, till moved 
thence to the Brick Tower, — from which he 
went to the block, in Palace Yard. 



58 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

The centre of what was once the Tower 
Green is marked with a brass plate, naming 
Anne Boleyn and giving the date when she 
was there beheaded. They found her body in 
no elm- wood box, made to hold arrows, and 
it now rests, with the ashes of other noble 
sufferers, under the stones of the church of 
St. Peter, about fifty feet from the place of 
execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said 
to haunt that part of the Tower where she 
was imprisoned, and it is likewise whispered 
that the spectre of Lady Jane Grey (1537- 
1554) has been seen, on the anniversary of 
the day of her execution, to glide out upon a 
balcony adjacent to the room in which she 
lodged during nearly eight months, at the last 
of her wasted, unfortunate, gentle life. A 
window of that room, — in a house which was 
then the abode of Thomas Brydges, brother 
and deputy of Sir John Brydges, Lieutenant 
of the Tower, — commands an unobstructed 
view of the Tower Green, the place of the 
block, and looking from that window, on the 
morning of the day appointed for her execu- 



ABBEY AND TOWER 59 

tion, the saintly girl saw her boy husband, 
Guilford Dudley, led away to his death, and 
presently also she saw the cart, containing 
his dead body. English history relates many 
sad stories, but few as sad as that of Lady 
Jane Grey. No wonder that her ghost 
walks. No wonder that melancholy phantoms 
haunt that gloomy fortress where she suf- 
fered, — the abiding monument of misery and 
tears. It could serve no purpose to relate 
the alleged particulars of those spectral visita- 
tions, but nobody doubts them, — while he is 
in the Tower. It is a place of mystery and 
horror, notwithstanding all that the practical 
spirit of To-day has done to make it trivial 
and to cheapen its grim glories by association 
with the commonplace. 



V. 

LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 

The mind that can reverence historic asso- 
ciations needs no explanation of the charm 
that such associations possess. There are 
streets and houses in London which, for pil- 
grims of this class, are haunted with memories 
and hallowed with an imperishable light that 
not even the dreary commonness of everyday 
life can quench or dim. Almost every great 
author in English literature has here left some 
personal trace, some relic that brings you at 
once into his living presence. In the time of 
Shakespeare, — of whom it should be noted 
that, wherever found, he is found in elegant 
neighborhoods, — Aldersgate was a secluded, 
peaceful quarter of the town, and there the 
poet had his residence, convenient to the theatre 
in Blackfriars, in which he owned a share. It 

60 







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^^i. C>( 



LITERARY SHRINKS 61 

is said that he dwelt at No. 184 Aldcrs- 
gate Street (the house was long ago demol- 
ished) and in that region* amid all the din 
of traffic and all the discordant adjuncts of a 
new age, those who love him are in his com- 
pany. Milton was horn in a court adjacent 
to Bread Street, Cheapside, and the explorer 
Comes upon him as a resident in St. Bride's 
churchyard, — where the poet Lovelace was 
buried, — and at No. 19 York Street, West- 
minster, — in later times occupied by Jeremy 
JJentharn and by William Hazlitt. When 
secretary to Cromwell he lived in Scotland 
Yard, now the headquarters of the London 
police. His last home was in Artillery Walk, 
Bunhill Fields, but the visitor to that spot 
finds it covered by the Artillery barracks. 
Walking through King Street, Westminster, 
you will not forget the great poet Edmund 
Spenser, who, a victim to barbarity, died there, 
in destitution and grief. Ben Jonson's terse 
record of that calamity says: "The Irish having 
robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his house 
and a little child new-born, he and his wife 



62 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

escaped, and after he died, for lack of bread, 
in King Street." Ben Jonson is closely asso- 
ciated with places that can still be seen. He 
passed his boyhood near Charing Cross, — 
having been born in Hartshorn Lane, now 
Northumberland Street; he attended the parish 
school of St. Martin's-in-t he-Fields; and per- 
sons who roam about Lincoln's Inn will call 
to mind that he helped to build it, — a trowel in 
one hand and a volume of Horace in the other. 
His residence, in his day of fame, was outside 
the Temple Bar, but all that neighborhood 
is new. 

The Mermaid, — which Jonson frequented, in 
companionship with Shakespeare, Fletcher, 
Herrick, Chapman, and Donne, — was in Bread 
Street, but no trace of it remains, and a bank- 
ing house stands now on the site of the old 
Devil Tavern, in Fleet Street, a room in which, 
called "The Apollo," was the trysting place 
of the Club of which he was the founder. The 
famous inscription, "O, rare Ben Jonson!" is 
three times cut in the Abbey; once in Poets' 
Corner and twice in the north aisle, where he 



LITERARY SHRINES 63 

was buried, — a little slab in the pavement mark- 
ing his grave. Dryden onee dwelt in a quaint, 
narrow house, in Fetter Lane, — the street 
in which Dean Swift has placed the home of 
Gulliver, and where the famous Doomsday 
Book was kept, — but, later, he removed to a 
finer dwelling, in Gerrard Street, Soho, which 
was the scene of his death. (The house in 
Fetter Lane was torn down in 1891.) Edmund 
Burke's house, also in Gerrard Street, is a 
beer-shop, but the memory of the great orator 
hallows the abode, and an inscription upon it 
proudly announces that here he lived. Dr. 
Johnson's house, in Gough Square, bears (or 
bore) a mural tablet, and standing at its time- 
worn threshold, the visitor needed no effort 
of fancy to picture that uncouth figure sham- 
bling through the crooked lanes that afford 
access to this queer, sombre, melancholy retreat. 
In that house he wrote the first Dictionary of 
the English Language and the characteristic, 
memorable letter to Lord Chesterfield. The 
historical antiquarian society that has marked 
many of the literary shrines of London has 



64, SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

rendered a signal service. The custom of 
marking the houses that are associated with 
renowned names is, obviously, a good one, 
because it provides instruction, and also because 
it tends to vitalize, in the general mind, a 
sense of the value of honorable repute: it 
ought, therefore, to be everywhere adopted and 
followed. A house associated with Sir Joshua 
Reynolds and a house associated with Hogarth, 
both in Leicester Square, and houses associ- 
ated with Benjamin Franklin and Peter the 
Great, in Craven Street; Sheridan, in Savile 
Row; Campbell, in Duke Street; Garrick, in 
the Adelphi Terrace; Mrs. Siddons, in Baker 
Street, and Michael Faraday, in Blandford 
Street, are only a few of the notable places 
which have been thus designated. More of 
such commemorative work remains to be done, 
and, doubtless, will be accomplished. The 
traveller would like to know in which of the 
houses in Buckingham Street Coleridge lodged, 
while he was translating "Wallenstein"; which 
house in Bloomsbury Square was the residence 
of Akenside, when he wrote "The Pleasures 



LITERARY SHRINES 65 

of Imagination," and of Croly, when he wrote 
"Salathiel"; or where it was that Gray lived, 
when he established his residence in Russell 
Square, in order to be one of the first (as he 
continued to be one of the most constant) 
students at the then newly opened British 
Museum (1759). The room that Reynolds 
occupied as a studio is an auction mart now. 
The stairs leading to it, which are made of 
stone, are much worn, but they remain as they 
were in old times, when, as can be imagined, 
the admirable painter's friends, Johnson, Gold- 
smith, Burke, and Bos well, walked on them, 
in many a festive night. These records, and 
such as these, may seem trivialities, but Nature 
has denied an unfailing source of innocent 
pleasure to the person who can feel no interest 
in them. For my part, when rambling in 
Fleet Street it is a special delight to remember 
even so little an incident as that recorded of 
the author of the "Elegy," — that he once saw 
there his contemptuous critic, Dr. Johnson, 
shambling along the sidewalk, and murmured 
to a companion, "Here comes Ursa Major." 



66 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

For true lovers of literature "Ursa Major" 
walks oftener in Fleet Street to-day than any 
living man. 

A good leading thread of literary research 
might be profitably followed by the student 
who should trace the footsteps of all the poets, 
dead and gone, that have held, in England, 
the office of laureate. John Kay was laureate 
in the reign of King Edward the Fourth; 
Andrew Bernard in that of King Henry the 
Seventh; John Skelton in that of King Henry 
the Eighth, and Edmund Spenser in that of 
Queen Elizabeth. Since then the succession has 
included the names of Samuel Daniel, Michael 
Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, 
John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, 
Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence Eusden, Colley 
Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, 
Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, William 
Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson. Most of 
those bards were intimately associated with 
London, and several of them are buried in the 
Abbey. It is, indeed, because so many storied 
names are written upon gravestones that the 



LITERARY SHRINES 67 

explorer of the old churches of London finds 
in them so rich a harvest of instructive asso- 
ciation and elevating thought. Few persons 
visit them, and you are likely to find yourself 
comparatively alone, in rambles of this kind. 
I went one morning into St. Martin's, — once 
"in-the-fields," now at the busy centre of the 
city, — and found there only a pew-opener, 
preparing for the service, and an organist, 
practicing music. It is a beautiful structure, 
with graceful spire and with columns of 
weather-beaten, gray stone, curiously stained 
with streaks of black, and it is almost as famous 
for theatrical names as St. Paul's, Covent 
Garden, or St. George's, Bloomsbury, or St. 
Clement Danes. There, in a vault beneath 
the church, was buried the bewitching, gen- 
erous Nell Gwynn ; there is the grave of James 
Smith, joint author with his brother Horace, — 
who was buried at Tunbridge Wells, — of "The 
Rejected Addresses"; there rests Richard Yates, 
the original Sir Oliver Surface; and there were 
laid the ashes of the romantic Mrs. Centlivre, 
and of George Farquhar, whom neither youth, 



68 SHAKESPEARE S ENGLAND 

genius, patient labor, nor sterling achievement 
could save from a life of misfortune and an 
untimely, piteous death. A cheerier associa- 
tion of this church is with the poet Thomas 
Moore, who was there married. At St. (iiles's- 
in-the-Fields are the graves o( George C nap- 
man, who translated Homer; Andrew Marvel, 
who wrote such lovely lyrics; Rich, the man- 
ager, who brought out "The Beggar's Opera," 
and dames Shirley, the fine dramatist and 
poet, whose immortal couplet has often been 
murmured in sueh solemn haunts as these: 

Only the actions of the just 

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust. 

Shirley was one of the most fertile, accom- 
plished, admirable, and admired of writers, dur- 
ing the greater part of his life ( 1 596-1 (HH>), 
and the study of liis writing amply rewards 
the diligence of the student. His plays, about 
forty in number, of which "The Traitor' is 
deemed the best tragedy and "The Lady of 
Pleasure" the best comedy, comprehend a wide 
variety of subject and exliibit refinement, 



LITERARY SHRINES 69 

(Jeep feeling, and sustained fluency of graceful 
expression. His name is associated with St. 
Albans, where lie dwelt as a school-teacher, 
and, in London, with Gray's Inn, where at 
one time he resided. When the Royal cause 
had been lost and the Puritan rule was pre- 
dominant, he fell into poverty and was com- 
pelled to revert to the distasteful occupation 
of teaching: his school was in Whitefriars. 
In 1666, after the Restoration, he was resi- 
dent in or near Fleet Street, and his home 
was one of the many dwellings that were 
destroyed in the great fire. Then he fled, with 
his wife (she was the second of his spouses), 
into the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, 
where, overcome with grief and terror, they 
both died, within twenty-four hours of each 
other, and they were buried in the same grave. 
It is a breezy, slate-colored evening, in July. 
I look from the window of a London house 
that fronts a spacious park. Those great 
elms, which in their wealth of foliage and 
irregular and pompous expanse of limb are 
so luxuriant, stately, and picturesque, fill the 



70 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

prospect, and nod and murmur in the wind. 
Through a rift in their heavy-laden boughs 
is visible a long vista of green field, in which 
many children are at play. Their happy laugh- 
ter and the rustle of leaves, with now and then 
the click of a horse's hoofs upon the road 
near by, make up the music of this hallowed 
hour. The sky is a little overcast, but not 
gloomy. As I muse upon this delicious scene 
the darkness slowly gathers, the stars come 
out, and presently the moon rises, and blanches 
the meadow with silver light. Thus the poets 
of England were environed when in life, and 
thus are hallowed now their shrines of remem- 
brance. 



VI. 

THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 

The American traveller who, having been a 
careful, interested reader of English history, 
visits London for the first time, half expects 
to find the ancient city in a state of mild 
decay, and, consequently, he is a little startled 
at first upon realizing that the present is as 
vital as ever the past was, and that London 
antiquity is, in fact, swathed in the robes of 
everyday action and very much alive. When, 
for example, you enter Westminster Hall 
you are beneath one of the most glorious 
canopies in the world, one that was built by 
King Richard the Second, whose grave, chosen 
by himself, is in the Abbey, across the street 
from where you stand. But this old hall is 
now only a vestibule to the Palace of West- 
minster. The Lords and the Commons of 

71 



72 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

England, on their way to the Halls of Par- 
liament, pass over the spot on which King 
Charles the First was condemned to death, 
and on which occurred the famous trial of 
Warren Hastings. It is only a thorough- 
fare, glorious though it be, alike in structure 
and historic renown. In Bishopsgate Street 
stands Crosby Place, — the same to which, in 
Shakespeare's tragedy of "Richard III.," the 
Duke of Glo'ster requests the retirement of 
Lady Anne. It is a restaurant now, and you 
can dine in the veritable throne-room of King 
Richard. The house of Cardinal Wolsey, in 
Fleet Street, has become a shop. To-day 
makes use of yesterday, all the world over. 

Those persons who, every day during the 
Parliamentary session, see the Mace that is 
borne through the lobby of the House of Com- 
mons, although they are obliged, on every occa- 
sion, to uncover as it passes, do not, apparently, 
view that symbol with particular interest. The 
House of Commons has had three Maces. The 
first one, — the one that Cromwell contemned, 
when he dissolved the Parliament, exclaiming, 




CROSBY PLACE, LONDON 

As in tin pathway of ih<- Past we stray 
Where History strews memorials nil tin way 
Slrangi haunted placet oftentimes we find 
That stir the fancy <nul impress tin- muni: 
Hen moody Richard dwelt, ",,,! hen remain 
Some i<iki faint traces <>i his stormy reigi>. 



PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 73 

"Take away that bauble!" — disappeared, after 
the judieial slaughter of King Charles the First. 
The Cromwell Mace was carried to the island 
of Jamaica, and it is there preserved, — in a 
museum, at Kingston. The Mace now used 
is the third. I saw it, one day, on its passage 
to the House of Commons, and was glad to 
remove the hat of respect to what it signifies, — 
the majesty of the free people of England. 
The Speaker of the House was walking behind 
it, very grand in his wig and gown, and the 
members trooped in at his heels to secure their 
places by being present at the opening prayer. 
A little later I was provided with a seat, in a 
dim corner, of that celebrated chamber, and 
could observe at ease that assemblage of the 
popular representatives and their management 
of the public business. The Speaker was on 
his throne; the Mace was on the table in 
front of him; the hats of the Commons were 
on their heads; and over that singular, ani- 
mated scene the waning light of a summer after- 
noon poured softly down, through the high, 
pictured windows of one of the most sym- 



74 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

metrical halls in the world. It was a lively 
day. Curiosity on the part of the Opposition 
and a respectful incertitude on the part of 
Her Majesty's ministers were the prevailing 
conditions. I had not before heard so many 
questions asked, save in study of French gram- 
mar, — and asked to so little purpose. Every- 
body wanted to know, and nobody wanted to 
tell. Each inquirer took off his hat when he 
rose to ask, and put it on when he sat down to 
be answered. Each governmental sphinx bared 
his brow when he emerged to divulge, and cov- 
ered it again when he subsided without divulg- 
ing. The superficial respect of these interlocu- 
tors for each other steadily remained, however, of 
the most deferential description, so that, — with- 
out discourtesy, — it was impossible not to think 
of Byron's "mildest mannered man that ever 
scuttled ship or cut a throat." Underneath that 
velvet manner the observer could readily dis- 
cern the fires of passion and strong antagonism. 
They make no parade in the House of Com- 
mons; they attend to their business; and upon 
every topic that is brought to their attention 



PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 75 

they seem to have definite ideas, strong con- 
victions, and settled purposes. The topic of 
Army Estimates, on this day, was in order, and 
discussion of it was continually diversified by 
cries of "Oh!" and of " Hear!" and of "Order!" 
and sometimes those cries savored more of 
derision than of compliment. Many persons 
spoke, but no person spoke well. An offhand, 
matter-of-fact, shambling method of speech 
would seem to be the fashion, in the House 
of Commons. I remembered the anecdote that 
De Quincey tells, about Sheridan and the 
young member who quoted Greek. It was 
easy to perceive how completely out of place 
the sophomore orator would be, in that assem- 
blage. Britons like better to make speeches 
than to hear them, and they will never be 
slaves to bad oratory. The moment an excited, 
verbose member obtained the floor, and began 
to read a manuscript concerning the Indian 
Government as many as forty Commoners 
arose and walked out of the House, — an 
example which it appeared correct, as well as 
desirable, to follow. 



76 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Books of description have been written about 
the Palace of Westminster, and it well deserves 
celebration; but this noble edifice, while affect- 
ing by its splendor, is deficient, as yet, in the 
charm of historic association. It was begun 
in 1840 and it has been fully occupied only 
since 1852. The old Palace of St. James, 
with its low, dusky walls, its round turrets, 
and its fretted battlements, is more impressive, 
because history has freighted it with meaning, 
and time has made it beautiful. But the 
Palace of Westminster is a magnificent struc- 
ture. It covers eight acres of ground, on the 
northern bank of the Thames; it contains eleven 
quadrangles and five hundred rooms; and, when 
its niches for statuary have been filled, it will 
contain two hundred and twenty-six sculptures. 
The statues in St. Stephen's Hall, — a superb 
art gallery, — are images of Selden, Hampden, 
Falkland, Clarendon, Somers, Walpole, Chat- 
ham, Mansfield, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Grat- 
tan. Those of Mansfield and Grattan, in 
particular, indicate distinctive character and 
power, making you feel that they are indubi- 



PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 77 

tably true portraits, and winning you by the 
charm of personality. There are also in 
Westminster Hall statues representing the four 
Georges, William and Mary, and Anne; but 
it is not of these you chiefly think, nor of any 
local, everyday object, when you stand beneath 
the wonderful roof of King Richard the Second. 
In that Hall have been enacted some of the 
most tragic and pathetic, and also some of the 
most august, scenes of English history. There, 
as some authorities say (while others name the 
Tower) , King Richard the Second was deposed. 
There Sir Thomas More, John Fisher, and 
Wentworth, the great Earl of Strafford, were 
condemned to die. There Cromwell was 
installed Lord Protector of the realm of Eng- 
land. There occurred the trial and acquittal of 
the Seven Bishops, — proceedings that convulsed 
the nation, in the reign of King James the Sec- 
ond. There, with all the ancient ceremonies of 
chivalry, King George the Fourth was crowned. 
The whole vast volume of British annals is 
widely opened, to all studious eyes, in and 
around the gorgeous Palace of Westminster. 



VII. . 

LONDON RAMBLES. 

The Spirit of the Past has not power upon 
every mind, but those fortunate beings who 
can feel its spell are aware of the mysterious 
charm that invests certain familiar spots and 
objects, in all old cities. London, to observers 
of this class, is a never-ending delight. Mod- 
ern cities denote a definite, conventional design. 
Their main avenues are parallel. Their shorter 
streets bisect their main avenues. They are 
diversified with circles and squares. Their 
configuration suggests the utilitarian fore- 
thought of the land-surveyor and civil engineer. 
The ancient British capital, on the contrary, is 
the expression, slowly and often capriciously 
made, of many thousands of characters. It is 
a city that has happened, and the stroller 
through the old part of it comes continually 

78 



LONDON RAMBLES 79 

upon eccentric alleys, courts, and nooks. Not 
far from Drury Lane, hidden in a clump of 
dingy houses, is a dismal little graveyard, the 
same that Dickens chose, in his novel of 
"Bleak House," as the sepulchre of little Jo's 
friend, the first love of the unfortunate Lady 
Dedlock. It is a doleful spot, draped in the 
faded robes of sorrow, and crowded into the 
twilight of obscurity by the thick-clustering 
habitations of men. (This place has been 
renovated since 1877, and it is no longer the 
civic blemish that once it was.) Such sombre 
nooks are not infrequently found in London, 
and indeed the old city, notwithstanding all 
its opulence and vigorous life, often impresses 
you as densely invested with an atmosphere 
of dark, sad, lamentable human experience. 
Walking alone, in ancient quarters of it, after 
midnight, I was aware of the oppressive sense 
of tragedies that have been acted and misery 
that has been endured in its dusky streets and 
melancholy houses. They, surely, do not err 
who think that the spiritual life of man leaves 
its influence in the physical objects by which 



80 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

he is surrounded. Night-walks in London will 
teach that, if they teach nothing else. I went 
more than once into Brooke Street, Holborn, 
and traced the desolate footsteps of poor 
Thomas Chatterton to the scene of his agonized, 
pathetic, deplorable death. It is more than a 
century (1770) since that "marvellous boy" 
was driven to suicide by neglect, penury, and 
despair. They have torn down the houses on 
one side of Brooke Street; it is doubtful which 
house was No. 4, in the attic of which Chatter- 
ton died, and doubtful whether it remains: his 
grave, — a pauper's grave, that was made in a 
workhouse burial-ground, in Shoe Lane, long 
since obliterated, — is unknown; but his presence 
hovers about that region, his strange, touching 
story tinges its commonness with the moon- 
light of romance, and his name is blended 
with it forever. On another night I walked 
from St. James's Palace to Whitehall, the 
York Place of Cardinal Wolsey, and viewed 
the ground that King Charles the First trav- 
ersed, on his way to the scaffold. The story of 
the slaughter of that king, always sorrowful 



LONDON RAMBLES 81 

to remember, is very grievous to consider, 
when you realize, upon the actual scene of his 
ordeal and death, his exalted fortitude and his 
bitter agony. It seemed as if I could almost 
hear his voice, as it sounded on that fateful 
morning, asking that his body might be more 
warmly clad, lest, in the cold January air, he 
should shiver, and so, before the eyes of his 
enemies, should seem to be trembling with 
fear. It is recorded that the Puritan authori- 
ties, having brought that poor man to the 
place of execution, kept him in suspense from 
early morning till after two o'clock in the day, 
while they debated over a proposition to spare 
his life, — upon any condition they might choose 
to make, — that had been sent to them by his 
son, Prince Charles. Old persons were alive 
in London, not very long ago, who remembered 
having seen, in their childhood, the window, in 
the Whitehall Banqueting House, — now a 
Chapel Royal and all that remains of the 
ancient palace, — through which the doomed 
monarch came forth to the block. It was long 
ago walled up, and the Palace has undergone 



82 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

much alteration since the days of the Stuarts. 
In the rear of Whitehall stands a hronze 
statue of King James the Second by Koubiliac 
(whose marbles are numerous, in the Abbey 
and elsewhere in London, and whose grave is 
in the church of St. Martin's), one of the most 
graceful works of that spirited sculptor. The 
figure is finely modelled. The face is dejected. 
The right hand points, with a truncheon, toward 
the earth. It is impossible to mistake the melan- 
choly meaning of this memorial; and equally it 
is impossible to walk without both thought that 
instructs and emotion that elevates through a 
city which thus abounds with traces of momen- 
tous incident and representative experience. 

The literary pilgrim in London possesses 
this double advantage, — that while he com- 
munes with the past he can enjoy in the pres- 
ent. Yesterday and to-day are commingled. 
When you turn from Roubiliac's statue of 
King James your gaze rests upon the house 
of Disraeli. If you walk in Whitehall, toward 
the Palace of Westminster, some friend may 
chance to tell you how the great Duke of 



LONDON RAMBLES 83 

Wellington walked there, in the feebleness of 
his age, from the Horse Guards to the House 
of Lords, and with what complacency the old 
warrior would boast of his skill in threading 
a crowded thoroughfare, — unaware that the 
police, acting by particular command, pro- 
tected his venerable person from errant cabs 
and pushing pedestrians. As I strolled, one 
day, past Lambeth Palace it happened that the 
gates of it were suddenly unclosed and that 
His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury came 
forth, on horseback, from that episcopal resi- 
dence, and ambled away toward the House of 
Lords. It is the same arched portal through 
which, in other days, passed out the stately 
train of Wolsey. It is the same towered 
palace that Queen Elizabeth looked upon, as 
her barge swept past, on its watery track to 
Richmond. It is forever associated with the 
memory of Thomas Cromwell. In the church, 
hard by, rest the ashes of men distinguished 
in the most diverse directions, — Jackson, the 
clown, and Tenison, the archbishop, — the "hon- 
est, prudent, laborious, and benevolent" pri- 



81 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

mate of King William the Third, who was 
thought worthy to succeed in office the illus- 
trious Tillotson. The cure of souls is sought 
there with as vigorous energy as when Tillotson 
wooed by his goodness ami charmed by his 
winning eloquence. 

A few miles distant from Lambeth you come 
upon the college at Dulwich that Edward 
Alleyn founded, in the time of Shakespeare, 
and that still subsists, upon the old actor's 
endowment. It is said that Alleyn, — who 
was a man of fortune, and whom a contempo- 
rary epigram styles the best actor of his 
day, — gained the most of his money by the 
exhibition of bears; but, howsoever gained, he 
made a good use of it. His tomb is in the 
centre of the college. There can be seen one 
of the most interesting picture-galleries in 
England. One of the cherished paintings in 
that collection is the famous portrait, by Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic 
Muse, — remarkable for its color, and splen- 
didly expositive of the boldness of feature, 
brilliancy of countenance, and stately grace of 



LONDON RAMBLES 85 

demeanor for whieh its original was distin- 
guished. Another represents two renowned 
beauties of their day, the Linley sisters, who 
heeame Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tiekel. You 
do not wonder, as you look on those fair faces, 
sparkling with health, areh with merriment, 
and sweet with sensibility, that Sheridan 
should have fought duels for such a prize as 
the lady of his love, or that those fascinating 
creatures, favored alike by the Graces and the 
Muse, should, in their gentle lives, have heen, 
"like Juno's swans, coupled and inseparable." 
Mary, Mrs. Tiekel, died first, and Moore, in 
his "Life of Sheridan," has preserved a tender 
and eloquent elegy for her, written by Eliza, 
Mrs. Sheridan: 

Shall all the wisdom of the world combined 
Erase thy image, Mary, from my mind, 
Or bid me hope from others to receive 
The fond affection thou alone couldst give? 
Ah, no, my best belov'd, thou still shalt be 
My friend, my sister, all the world to me! 

Precious also among the gems of the Dul- 
wich gallery are excellent specimens of the 



86 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

dreamy style of Murillo. The pilgrim passes 
on, by a short drive, to Sydenham, and dines 
at the Crystal Palace, ami still he finds the 
faces of the past and the present strangely con- 
fronted. Nothing could he more aptly repre- 
sentative of the practical, ostentations spirit of 
To-day than is that enormous, opulent, glitter- 
ing structure, called by Thackeray's Irish cele- 
brant a "palace made of windows": yet I saw 
there the carriage which Napoleon Bonaparte 
used, at St. Helena, — a vehicle as sombre as 
were the broken fortunes of its death-stricken 
master, — and, sitting at a table close by, I saw 
the son of Bonaparte's impetuous champion, 
William Hazlitt. 

It was a gray ami misty evening, when I 
beheld those sights. The plains below the 
palace terraces were veiled in shadow, through 
which, here and there, twinkled the lights of 
some peaceful villa. Far away the spires and 
domes of London, dimly seen, pierced the city's 
nightly pall of smoke. It was a dream too 
sweet to last. It ended when all the illumina- 
tions were burnt out, when the myriads of red 



LONDON RAMBLES 87 

and green and yellow stars had fallen, and all 
the silver fountains had ceased to play. 

No person can realize, without experience, 
the number and variety of pleasures accessible 
to the resident of London. These may not be 
piquant to him who has them always within his 
reach: I met with residents of the British capi- 
tal who had always intended to visit the Tower, 
but had never done so: but to the stranger 
they possess a constant, keen fascination. The 
Derby in 1877 was thought to be, compara- 
tively, a tame race, but one spectator, who 
saw it from the top of the grand stand, thought 
that the scene it presented was wonderfully 
brilliant. The sky had been overcast with dull 
clouds till the moment when the race was won; 
but just as Archer, rising in his saddle, seemed 
to lift his horse forward to gain the goal alone, 
the sun burst forth and shed upon the downs 
a sheen of gold, and lit up all the distant hills 
and all the far-stretching roads that wind away 
from the region of Epsom like threads of 
silver through the green, and carrier-pigeons 
were instantly launched off to London, with the 



88 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

news of the victory of "Silvio." There was one 
winner on the grand stand who had laid hets 
on "Silvio," for no other reason than because 
that horse bore the prettiest name in the list. 
This allurement is annual, but many others are 
almost perennial. Greenwich, with its white- 
bait dinner, invites the epicure during the best 
part of the London season. A favorite tavern 
is the Trafalgar, in which each room is named 
after some magnate of the old British navy, 
and Nelson, Hardy, and Rodney are house- 
hold words. Another cheery place of resort 
is The Ship. The Hospitals are at Greenwich, 
buildings that Dr. Johnson thought to be too 
fine for a charity, — and back of these, which 
are ordinary, in comparison with modern 
structures erected for a kindred purpose, 
stands the famous Observatory that keeps time 
for Europe. That place is hallowed also by 
the grave of Clive and by that of Wolfe, — 
to the latter of whom there is a monument in 
Westminster Abbey. Greenwich makes you 
think of Queen Elizabeth, who was born there, 
who often held her court there, and who often 



LONDON RAMBLES 89 

sailed thence, in her barge, up the river, to 
Richmond, — her favorite retreat and the scene 
of her last days and her pathetic death. Few 
spots can compare with Richmond, in brill- 
iancy of landscape. That place, the Shene of 
old times, was long a royal residence. The 
woods and meadows that you see from the 
terrace of the Star and Garter tavern, — spread 
upon a rolling plain, as far as the eye can 
reach, — sparkle like emeralds, and the Thames, 
dotted with little, toy-like boats, shines with 
the deep lustre of burnished jet. Rich- 
mond, for those who honor genius and who 
love to walk in the footsteps of renown, is full 
of interest. Dean Swift once had a house 
there, the site of which is still indicated. 
Pope's home was in the adjacent village of 
Twickenham, where it can still be seen. The 
poet Thomson long resided at Richmond, in 
a house now used as an hospital, and there he 
died. Edmund Kean and Anna Maria Yates 
rest beneath Richmond church, and there also 
are the ashes of Thomson. As I drove through 
the sweetly sylvan Park of Richmond, in the 



90 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

late afternoon of a breezy summer day, and 
heard the whispering of the great elms, and 
saw the gentle, trustful deer couched at ease 
in the golden glades, I thought of the tender 
lament of Collins, — which is now a prophecy 
fulfilled: 

Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, 
When Thames in summer wreaths is drest, 

And oft suspend the dashing oar, 
To bid his gentle spirit rest. 



VIII. 

A GLIMPSE OF WINDSOR. 

If the beauty of England were only super- 
ficial it would produce only a superficial effect; 
it would cause a passing pleasure and would 
be forgotten. It certainly would not, — as now, 
in fact, it does, — inspire a deep, joyous, serene, 
grateful contentment, and linger in the mind, 
a gracious and beneficent remembrance. The 
conquering and lasting potency of it resides 
not alone in loveliness of expression but in 
loveliness of character. Having first greatly 
blessed the British Islands with the natural 
advantages of position, climate, soil, and 
products, Nature has wrought their develop- 
ment and adornment as a necessary conse- 
quence of the spirit of their inhabitants. The 
picturesque variety and pastoral repose of the 
English landscape spring, in a considerable 

91 



92 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

measure, from the imaginative taste and the 

gentleness of the English people. The state 
of the country, like its social constitution, flows 
from principles within, which are constantly 

suggested, and it steadily comforts and nour- 
ishes the mind with a sense oi' kindly feeling, 
moral rectitude, solidity, and permanence. 
Thus in the peculiar beauty o\^ England the 
ideal is made the actual, is expressed in things 
more than in words, and in things by which 
words are transcended. Milton's "L' Allegro," 
tine as it is, is not as tine as the scenery — the 
crystallized, embodied poetry — out of which it 
arose. All the delicious rural verse that has 
been written in England is only the exeess or 
snperthix oi' her poetic opulence: it has rippled 
from the hearts of her poets, even as the fra- 
grance iloats away from her hawthorn hedges. 
At every step of his progress the pilgrim 
through English scenes is impressed by this 
sovereign excellence of the accomplished fact, 
as contrasted with any words that can he said in 
its celebration. 

Among representative scenes that are elo- 




h * »"fe 



A GLIMPSE OF WINDSOR 93 

qucnt with this instructive meaning — scenes 
easily and pleasurably accessible to the trav- 
eller — is the region of Windsor. The charm 
that it exercises can only be suggested. To see 
Windsor, moreover, is to comprehend, as at a 
glance, the old feudal system, and to feel, in a 
profound and special way, the pomp of English 
character and history. More than this: it is to 
rise to the ennobling serenity that accompanies 
broad, retrospective contemplation of the cur- 
rent of human affairs. In this quaint, decorous 
town, nestled at the base of that mighty and 
magnificent castle which has been the home of 
princes for more than five hundred years, the 
imaginative mind wanders over vast tracts of 
the past and beholds, as in a mirror, the 
pageants of chivalry, the coronations of kings, 
the strife of sects, the battles of armies, the 
schemes of statesmen, the decay of transient 
systems, the growth of a rational civilization, 
and the everlasting march of thought. Every 
prospect of the region intensifies this contem- 
plative sentiment of grandeur. As you look 
from the castle walls your gaze comprehends 



<u SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

miles and miles of blooming country, sprinkled 
with little hamlets, wherein the stateliness of 
learning and rank is gracefully commingled 
with all that is lovely and soothing in rural 
life. Not far away rise the "antique towers" 
of Eton, 

Where grateful science still adores 
Her Henry's holy shade. 

It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry 
was born, and there he often held his court, 
and it is in St. George's chapel that his ashes 
repose. In the dim distance stands the church 
of Stoke-Pogis, about which Gray habitually 
wandered, — 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade. 

You recognize now a deeper significance than 
ever before in the "solemn stillness" of the 
incomparable Elegy. The luminous twilight 
mood of that immortal poem — its pensive 
reverie and solemn passion — is inherent in the 
scene; and you feel that it was there, and there 
only, that the genius of its exceptional author. 



A GLIMPSE OF WINDSOR 95 

austerely gentle and severely pure, and thus 
in perfeet harmony with its surroundings, could 
have been moved to that sublime strain of 
inspiration and eloquence. Near at hand, in 
the midst of your reverie, the mellow organ 
sounds from the chapel of St. George, where, 
under "fretted vault" and over "long-drawn 
aisle," depend the ghostly, mouldering banners 
of ancient knights, — as still as the bones of 
the monarehs that crumble in the crypt below. 
That church is the sepulchre of many of the 
kings and nobles of England. The handsome, 
gallant King Edward the Fourth here found his 
grave, and near it is that of the accomplished 
Hastings, his faithful friend, to the last and 
after. There lies the dust of the stalwart, 
impetuous, savage King Henry the Eighth, and 
there, at midnight, by the light of torches, 
they laid beneath the pavement the decapitated 
body of King Charles the First. As you stand 
on Windsor ramparts, pondering thus upon the 
storied past and the evanescence of "all that 
beauty, all that wealth e'er gave," your eyes 
rest dreamily on green fields far below, through 



96 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

which, under tall elms, the brimming and 
sparkling river flows on without a sound, and 
in which a few figures, dwarfed by distance, 
flit here and there, in seeming aimless idleness; 
while, warned homeward by impending sun- 
set, the chattering birds circle and float around 
the lofty towers of the castle, and delicate per- 
fumes of syringa and jasmine are wafted up 
from dusky, unknown depths at the base of 
its ivied steep. At such an hour I stood on 
those ramparts and saw the shy villages and 
rich meadows of fertile Berkshire, all red and 
golden with sunset light; and at such an hour 
I stood in the lonely cloisters of St. George's 
chapel, and heard the distant organ sob, and 
saw the sunlight fade upon the gray walls, and 
felt and knew T the sanctity of religion. Age 
and death have made this church illustrious, 
but the spot itself has its own innate charm 
of mystical repose. 

The drive from the front of Windsor 
Castle is through a broad, stately avenue, three 
miles in length, straight as an arrow T and level 
as a standing pool; and this white highway 



A GLIMPSE OF WINDSOR 97 

through the green, fragrant fields is sumptu- 
ously embowered, from end to end, in dou- 
ble rows of magnificent elms and oaks. The 
Windsor avenue, like the splendid chestnut 
grove at Bushey Park, has long been famous 
among the pageants of rural England. It 
is after leaving this that the rambler comes 
upon the more reclusive beauties of Windsor 
Park and Forest. From the far end of the 
avenue, — where, in a superb position, an eques- 
trian statue of King George the Third rises, 
on a massive pedestal of native rock, — the 
road winds away, through shaded dell and 
verdant glade, past great, gnarled beeches and 
under boughs of elm and yew and oak, till its 
silver thread is lost in the distant woods. At 
intervals a devious branching pathway strays 
off to some secluded lodge, half hidden in foli- 
age, — the property of the Crown, and the rural 
residence of some scion of the royal race. In 
one of those retreats dwelt poor old King 
George the Third, in the days of his mental 
darkness, and the memory of that afflicted man 
seems still to cast a shadow on the mysterious, 



98 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

melancholy house. They show you, under glass, 
in one of the Lodge gardens, an enormous 
grapevine, owned by the Crown a vine which, 
from its single stalwart trunk, spreads its teem- 
ing branches, Laterally, more than a hundred feel 
in each direction. So come use and thrift, 

hand in hand with romance! Many an aged 
oak is passed, in your progress, round which, 

"at still midnight," Heme the Hunter might 
take his ghostly prowl, shaking his chain 
"in a most hideous and dreadful manner." 
'The wreck of the veritable Heme's Oak, it is 
said, was rooted out, together with other aneient, 
decayed trees, in the time oi' King George 
the Third, and in somewhat too literal fulfil- 
ment oi' his Majesty's misinterpreted com- 
mand. Windsor Park is fourteen miles in 
circumference ami it contains nearly four thou- 
sand acres, and many oi' the youngest trees 
that adorn it are more than one hundred and 
fifty years old. Far in its heart you stroll by 
Virginia Water, — an artificial lake, faultless 
in its beauty, — and perceive it to be so deep 
and ample that a large ship (a tine one was 



A GLIMPSE OF WINDSOR 99 

there when I saw it) can navigate its wind- 
swept, curling billows. This lake was made by 
the sanguinary Duke of Cumberland, he who 
led the English forces, and disgraced the Eng- 
lish arms, at Culloden. In the dim groves that 
fringe its margin are many nests wherein pheas- 
ants arc bred, to fall by the royal shot (a 
coarse, not to say brutal, "sport") and to sup- 
ply the loyal table: those you can contemplate 
but not approach. At a point in the walk, 
Sequestered and lonely, they have set up and 
skilfully disposer! the fragments of a genuine 
ruined temple, brought from the remote East, — 
relic, perchance, of "Tadmor's marble waste," 
and certainly a solemn memorial of the morn- 
ing twilight of time. Broken arch, storm- 
stained pillar, and shattered column are there 
shrouded with moss and ivy; and, should you 
chance to see them as the evening shadows 
deepen and the evening wind sighs mournfully 
in the trees and grass, your fancy will not fail 
to credit the perfect illusion that one of the 
stateliest structures of antiquity has slowly 
crumbled where now its fragments remain. 



100 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

"Quaint" is a descriptive epithet that has 
been much abused, but it can, with absolute 
propriety, be applied to Windsor. The devious 
little streets there visible, and the carved and 
timber-crossed buildings, often of great age, 
are uncommonly rich in the expressiveness of 
imaginative character. The emotions and the 
fancy, equally with the sense of necessity and 
the instinct of use, have exercised their influ- 
ence and uttered their spirit in the shaping 
and adornment of the town. While it con- 
stantly feeds the eye, with that pleasing irregu- 
larity of lines and forms which is so delicious 
and refreshing, it quite as constantly nurtures 
the sense of romance that ought to play so large 
a part in our lives, redeeming us from the 
tyranny of the commonplace and intensifying 
all the high feelings and noble aspirations that 
are possible to human nature. England con- 
tains many places like Windsor; some that 
blend in even richer amplitude the elements 
of quaintness and loveliness with that of mag- 
nificence. The meaning of them all is the 
same: that romance, beauty, and gentleness 



A GLIMPSE OF WINDSOR 101 

are forever vital; that their forces are within 
our souls, and ready and eager to find their 
way into our thoughts, actions, and circum- 
stances, and to brighten for every one of us 
the face of every day; that they ought neither 
to be relegated to the distant and the past nor 
kept for our books and day-dreams alone, but, 
1X1 a calmer, higher mood than is usual in this 
age of critical scepticism and miscellaneous 
tumult, should be permitted to flow forth into 
our architecture, adornments, and customs, to 
hallow and preserve our antiquities, to soften 
our manners, to give us tranquillity, patience, 
and tolerance, to make our country lovahle for 
ourselves, and so to enable us to bequeath it, 
sure of love and reverence, to succeeding ages. 



IX. 

WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

It is strange that the life of the past, in its 
unfamiliar remains and fading traces, should 
so far surpass the life of the present, in 
impressive force and influence. Human char- 
acteristics, although manifested under widely 
different conditions, were the same in old times 
that they are now. It is not in them, surely, 
that we are to seek for the mysterious charm 
that hallows ancient objects and the historical 
antiquities of the world. There is many a 
venerable, weather-stained church in London, 
at sight of which your steps falter and your 
thoughts take a wistful, melancholy turn, 
although then you may not know either who 
built it, or who has worshipped in it, or what 
dust of the dead is mouldering in its vaults. 
The spirit which thus instantly possesses and 

102 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 103 

controls you is not one of association, but is 
inherent in the place. Time's shadow on the 
works of man, like moonlight on a landscape, 
gives only graces to the view, — tingeing them 
the while with sombre sheen, — and leaves all 
blemishes in darkness. This may suggest the 
reason that relics of bygone years so sadly 
please and strangely awe us, in the passing 
moment; or it may be that we involuntarily 
contrast their apparent permanence with our 
evanescent mortality, and so are dejected with 
a sentiment of dazed helplessness and solemn 
grief. This sentiment it is, allied to bereaved 
love and a natural wish for remembrance after 
death, that has filled Westminster Abbey, and 
many another holy mausoleum, with sculptured 
memorials of the departed, and this, perhaps, 
is the subtle attraction that makes us linger 
beside them, "with thoughts beyond the reaches 
of our souls." 

When the gentle angler Izaak Walton went 
into Westminster Abbey to see the tomb of 
Casaubon, he scratched his monogram on the 
scholar's monument, where the record, "I. W., 



104 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

1658," may still be read by the stroller in the 
South Aisle. A devout pilgrim might well 
wish to follow that example, and even thus to 
associate his name with the great cathedral: 
and not in pride, but in humble reverence. 
There, if anywhere, self-assertion is rebuked 
and human eminence set at naught. Among 
all the impressions that crowd upon the mind 
in that wonderful place that which oftenest 
recurs and longest remains is the impression 
of individual man's insignificance. This is 
salutary, but it is also depressing. There can 
be no enjoyment of the Abbey till, after much 
communion with the spirit of the place, your 
soul is soothed by its beauty rather than over- 
whelmed by its majesty, and your mind ceases 
from the vain effort to grasp and interpret 
its tremendous meaning. You cannot long 
endure, and you never can express, the sense 
of grandeur that is inspired by Westminster 
Abbey; but, when at length its shrines and 
tombs and statues become familiar, when its 
chapels, aisles, arches, and cloisters are grown 
companionable, and you can stroll and dream 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 105 

undismayed "through rows of warriors and 
through walks of kings," there is no limit to 
the pensive memories they awaken and the 
gentle, poetic fancies they prompt. In that 
church are buried, among generations of their 
nobles and courtiers, fourteen monarchs of 
England, beginning with the Saxon Sebert 
and ending with George the Second. Four- 
teen queens rest there, and many children of 
the royal blood who never came to the throne. 
There, confronted in a haughty rivalry of 
solemn pomp, rise the equal tombs of Eliza- 
beth Tudor and Mary Stuart. Queen Elea- 
nor's dust is there, and there, too, is the dust 
of grim Queen Mary. In one little chapel, you 
can pace, with only a few steps, across the 
graves of King Charles the Second, King Wil- 
liam and Queen Mary, and Queen Anne and 
her consort Prince George. At the tomb of 
King Henry the Fifth you can see the helmet, 
shield, and saddle that were worn by the valiant 
young king at Agincourt, and close by, — on 
the tomb of Margaret of York, daughter of 
King Edward the Fourth, — the sword and 



106 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

shield that wore borne, in royal state, before 
the great King Edward the Third, five hundred 
years ago. The princes who are said to have 
been murdered in the Tower are commemo- 
rated there by an altar, set up by King Charles 
the Second, whereon the inscription, — blandly 
oblivions of the incident of Cromwell, — states 
that it was erected in the thirtieth year of 
King Charles's reign. King Richard the 
Second, deposed and assassinated, is there 
entombed, and within a few feet oi' him are 
the relies of his uncle, the able and powerful 
Duke oi' Gloucester, treacherously ensnared and 
betrayed to death. There also, huge, rough, 
and gray, is the stone sarcophagus of King 
Edward the First, which, when opened, in 1771, 
diselosed the skeleton of departed majesty, still 
perfect, wearing robes of gold tissue and crim- 
son velvet, and having a crown on the head 
and a sceptre in the hand. So sleep, in jewelled 
darkness and gaudy decay, what once were 
monarehs! And around are great lords, 
sainted prelates, famous statesmen, renowned 
soldiers, and illustrious poets — all enshrined 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 107 

in one of the grandest sepulchres in the 
world. 

The interments that have been effected in 
and around the Abbey since the remote age 
of Edward the Confessor number thousands, 
but only about six hundred are named in 
the chronicles. In the South Transept, which 
is Poets' Corner, rest Chaucer, Spenser, Dray- 
ton, Cowley, Dryden, Beaumont, Davenant, 
Prior, Gay, Congreve, and Ilowe. Memorials 
to many other poets and writers have been 
ranged on the adjacent walls and pillars, but 
these are among the authors that were 
buried in this place. Ben Jonson is not in 
Poets' Corner, but, — in an upright posture, it 
is said, — under the North Aisle of the Abbey. 
Addison was laid in the chapel of King Henry 
the Seventh, at the foot of the monument of 
Charles Montague, the great Earl of Halifax, 
and Bulwer in the chapel of Saint Edmund, 
while in St. Edward's chapel sleep Anne of 
Cleves, the divorced wife of King Henry the 
Eighth, and Anne Neville, Queen of King 
Richard the Third. Betterton and Spranger 



108 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Harry wore buried in the cloisters, where can 
be read, in four little words, the most touch- 
ing epitaph in the Abbey: ".Jane Lister — dear 
child." There is no monument to either 
Byron, Shelley, Swil't, Pope, Bolingbroke, 
Keats, Cowper, Moore, or young; but Mason 
and Shadwell are commemorated, and Barton 
Booth is splendidly inn rued, while hard by, in 
the cloisters, a place was found for Mrs. Cibbcr, 
Tom Brown, and Aphra Behn. The destinies 
have not always been stringently fastidious as 
to the admission of lodgers to that sacred 
ground. The pilgrim is startled by some of 
the names that he finds in the Abbey, and 
pained by reflection on the absence of some 
that he will seek in vain. Yet he will not fail 
to moralize, as he strolls in Poets' Corner, 
upon the inexorable justice with which time 
repudiates fictitious reputations and twines the 
laurel on only the worthiest brows. In well- 
nigh live hundred years of English literature 
there have lived not more than about one hun- 
dred and fifty poets whose names survive in 
any requisite compendium, and not all of those 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 109 

are really known, except to exhaustive readers. 
It is, of course, true that, in many instances, 
the authentic note of enduring poetry has hecn 
sounded by some writer in only a single poem, 
such as that of Charles Wolfe, on "The Burial 
of Sir John Moore," hut those stray notes are 
little heeded, in comparison with the organ 
tones of a Milton and the abundant, native, 
sweet, bird-like warbling of a Burns. 

To muse over the literary memorials in the 
Abbey is also to think upon the seeming 
caprice of chance with which the graves of 
the British bards have been scattered far and 
wide throughout the land. Gower, Fletcher, 
and Massinger (to name but a few of them) 
rest in Southwark; Sidney and Donne in St. 
Paul's Cathedral; Marlowe at Deptford; Her- 
rick at Dean Prior; Herbert at Bemerton; 
Home at Margate; Drummond in Lasswade 
church; Dorset at Withyham, in Sussex; Wal- 
ler at Beaconsfield ; Wither, unmarked, in the 
church of the Savoy; Milton in the church of 
the Cripplegate; Swift at Dublin, in St. Pat- 
rick's Cathedral; Young at Welwyn; Pope at 



110 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Twickenham; Thomson at Richmond; Gray 
at Stoke-Pogis; Watts in Bunhill-Fields ; Col- 
lins in an obscure little church at Chichester; 
Cowpei in Dereham church; Goldsmith in 
the garden of the Temple; Savage at Bris- 
tol; Burns at Dumfries; Rogers in Hornsey; 
Crabbe at Trowbridge; Scott in Dryburgh 
Abbey; Coleridge at Highgate; Byron in 
Ilueknall church, near Nottingham; Moore 
at Bromham; Montgomery at Sheffield; Heber 
at Calcutta; Southey in Crossthwaite church- 
yard, near Keswick; Wordsworth and Hartley 
Coleridge side by side in the churchyard of 
Grasmere; and Clough at Florence, — whose 
passionate aspiration might here speak for all 
of them: 

One port, methought, alike they sought, 
One purpose held, where'er they fare: 

O bounding breeze, O rushing seas, 
At hist, at last, unite them there! 

But it is not alone in the great Abbey that 
the rambler in London is impressed by poetic 
antiquity and touching historic association, — 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 111 

always presuming that he has been a reader 
of English literature and that his reading has 
sunk into his mind. Little things, equally 
with great ones, commingled in a medley, lux- 
uriant and delicious, so people the memory of 
such a pilgrim that all his walks will be 
haunted. The London of to-day (as can be 
seen in Macaulay's famous third chapter, and 
in Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel") is very little 
like even the London of King Charles the Sec- 
ond, when the great fire had destroyed eighty- 
nine churches and thirteen thousand houses, and 
when what is now Regent Street was a rural 
solitude in which sportsmen sometimes shot the 
woodcock. Yet, though much of the old capi- 
tal has vanished and more of it has been 
changed, many remnants of its historic past 
exist, and many of its streets and houses are 
fraught with a delightful, romantic interest. 
It is not forgotten that sometimes the charm 
resides in the eyes that see, even more than 
in the object that is seen. The storied spots 
of London may not be appreciable by all who 
look upon them every day. The coachmen in 



112 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the region of Kensington Palace Road may 
neither regard, nor even notice, the house in 
which Thackeray lived and died. The shop- 
keepers of old Bond Street may. perhaps, 
neither know nor care that in a house in this 
street occurred the woeful death-scene of Lau- 
rence Sterne. The How Street officers are 
quite unlikely to think of Will's Coffee House 
and Dry ilen, or Button's ami Addison, as they 
pass the sites of those vanished haunts o( wit 
and fashion in the days oi' Queen Anne. The 
lounger through Berkeley Square, when per- 
chance he pauses at the corner o( Bruton 
Street, will not discern Colley Cibber, in wig 
and ruffles, standing at the parlor window 
and drumming with his hands on the frame. 
The casual passenger, halting at the Tavistoek. 
will not remember that this was onee Maeklin's 
Ordinary, and so conjure up the iron visage 
ami ferocious aspect oi' the first great 
Shylock oi' the stage, formally obsequious to 
his guests, or striving to edify them, despite 
the banter oi' the volatile Foote, with diseourse 
upon '"the Causes o( Duelling in Ireland." 




6"< "v. ~ ~ 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 113 

The Barbican does not, to every one, sum- 
mon the austere memory of Milton, nor Hol- 
born raise the melancholy shade of Chatterton, 
nor Tower Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of 
Otway, nor Hampstead lure forth the sunny 
figure of Steele and the passionate face of 
Keats, nor old Northampton Street suggest 
the burly presence of "rare Ben Jonson," nor 
opulent Kensington revive the stately head of 
Addison, nor a certain window in Wellington 
Street reveal, in fancy's picture, the rugged 
lineaments and splendid eyes of Dickens. Yet 
London never disappoints; and for him who 
knows and feels its liistory those associations, 
and hundreds like to them, make it populous 
with noble or strange or pathetic figures, and 
diversify the aspect of its vital present with 
pictures of an equally vital past. Such a wan- 
derer discovers that in this vast capital there is 
no end to the themes that are to stir his 
imagination, touch his heart, and broaden his 
mind. Soothed by the equable English climate 
and the lovely English scenery, he is aware 
now of an influence in the solid English city 



114 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

that turns his intellectual life to perfect tran- 
quillity. He stands amid superb memorials of 
heroic achievement ; he comprehends the sum 

of all that is possible to human thought, pas- 
sion, and labor, and then, — high over mighty 
London, above the dome of St. Paul's Cathe- 
dral, piercing the clouds, greeting the sun, 
drawing into itself all the tremendous life of 
the great city and all the meaning of its past 
and present} — he views the sacred symbol of 
civilization, the golden cross of Christ. 



X. 

OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 

Sight-seeing, merely for its own sake, is 
not to be commended. Hundreds of persons 
roam through the storied places of England, 
carrying away nothing hut the sense of travel. 
It is not the spectacle that benefits, but the 
meaning of the spectacle. In the great tem- 
ples of religion, in those wonderful cathedrals 
that are the glory of the Old World, we ought 
to feel not merely the physical beauty but the 
perfect, illimitable faith, the passionate, inces- 
sant devotion, which alone made them possible. 
The cold intellect of a sceptical age could 
never create such a majestic cathedral as that 
of Canterbury. Not till the pilgrim feels this 
truth has he really learned the lesson of such 
places, — to keep alive in his heart the capacity 
of self-sacrifice, of toil and of tears, for the 

115 



116 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

grandeur and beauty of the spiritual life, At 
the tombs of great men we ought to feel some- 
thing more than a consciousness oi the mini- 
Ming clay that moulders within, something 
more, even, than knowledge of their memorable 
words and deeds: we Ought, as we ponder on 
the certainty oi death and the evanescence oi 
earthly things, to realize that art at least is 
permanent, and that no creature can be better 
employed than in noble effort to make the 
soul worthy of immortality. The relies oi the 
past, contemplated merely because they are 
relies, are nothing. Von might well grow 
weary, in the monotonous contemplation oi 

ruins and oi graves, and long for endless roses 
and to look upon the face oi childhood, the 
ocean, and the stars. But that revulsion oi 
feeling will not oeeur if the significance of the 

past is truly within your sympathy; if you 
perceive its associations as feeling equally with 
knowledge; if you truly know that its les- 
sons are not of death but of life. To-day 
builds over the ruins of yesterday, as well in 
the soul of man as on the vanishing eities that 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON m 

mark his course. There need be no regret 

that the present should, in this sense, obliterate 
the past. 

Much, however, as London has changed, 
and constantly as it continues to change, there 
remain, and will continue to remain, many 
objects that startle and impress the sensitive 
mind. Through all the wide compass of the 
vast city, by night and day, there flows and 
heats a turbulent, resounding tide of activity, 
and throngs of trivial persons, ignorant and 
commonplace, tramp to and fro amid its 
storied antiquities, heedless of their exist- 
ence. Through such surroundings, hut finding 
here and there a sympathetic guide or a friendly 
suggestion, the explorer must make his way, — 
lonely in the crowd, and walking like one who 
lives in a dream. Yet he never will drift in 
vain through a city like this. J went one night 
into the cloisters of the Abbey, — that part, the 
South Walk, whieh remains accessible after 
the gates have been elosed. The stars shone 
upon the blackening walls and glimmering 
windows of the great Cathedral; the grim, 



118 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

mysterious arches were dimly lighted; the stony 
pathways, stretching away beneath the vener- 
able building, seemed to lose themselves in 
caverns of darkness; not a sound was heard 
but the faint rustling of the grass upon the 
cloister green. Every stone there is the mark 
of a sepulchre; every breath of the night wind 
seemed the whisper of a gliding ghost. There, 
among the crowded graves, rest Anne Brace- 
girdle, in Queen Anne's reign the most brill- 
iant female luminary of the stage; Aaron Hill; 
Mrs. Gibber, — of whom Garrick said, "tragedy 
expired with her"; Anne Crawford, who had 
been Mrs. Dancer and Mrs. Barry; and the 
once exuberant and dazzling Samuel Foote. 
Sitting upon the narrow ledge that was the 
monks' rest, I could touch, close at hand, the 
tomb of a mitred abbot, while at my feet 
was the huge slab that covers twenty-six monks 
of Westminster who perished by the plague, 
nearly six hundred years ago. It would 
scarcely be believed that the doors of dwell- 
ings open upon that gloomy spot; that ladies 
can sometimes be seen, tending flowers upon 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 119 

the ledges that roof those cloister walks. 
Yet so it is; and in such a place, at such a 
time, you comprehend the self-centred, serious 
character of the English mind, which loves, 
more than anything else in the world, the 
privacy of august surroundings and a sombre, 
stately solitude. It hardly need be said that 
you likewise obtain there a striking sense of 
the force of contrast. I was again aware of 
this, a little later, when, seeing a dim light in 
St. Margaret's Church, I entered that old tem- 
ple and found members of the choir at their 
rehearsal, and presently observed on the wall 
a brass plate which records that Sir Walter 
Raleigh was buried there, in the chancel. 
That inscription asks the reader to remember 
Raleigh's virtues as well as his faults, — a plea 
that every man might well wish should be made 
for himself at last. I thought of the verses 
that the old warrior-poet is said to have left 
in his Bible, when they led him out to die: 

Even such is Time ; that takes in trust 
Our youth, our joys, our all we have, 



120 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

And pays us naught but age and dust ; 
Which, in the dark and silent grave, 

When we have wandered all our ways, 

Shuts up the story of our days. 
But from this earth, this grave, this dust, 
My God shall raise me up, I trust. 

St. Margaret's Church contains a window 
commemorative of Raleigh, which was pre- 
sented by Americans, and which is inscribed 
with these lines, by Lowell: 

The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew 
Such milk as bids remember whence we came ; 
Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew, 
This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name. 

It also contains a window commemorative 
of Caxton, presented by the printers and pub- 
lishers of London, which is inscribed with these 
lines, by Tennyson: 

Thy prayer was Light — more Light — while Time shall 

last. 
Thou sawest a glory growing on the night, 
But not the shadows which that light would cast 
Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light. 




INTERIOR OF ST. MARGARETS, WESTMINSTER 



The high embowed, roof 
With antic pillars massy proof 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light. 

3IILTOX. 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 121 

In St. Margaret's, — storied with shining 
names of poets and nobles, — was also buried 
(1529) old John Skelton, the enemy and 
satirist of Cardinal Wolsey and of Sir Thomas 
More, one of whom he described as " madde 
Amaleke," and the other as "dawcock doc- 
tor." Their renown has survived those terrific 
barbs, but, at least, this was a falcon that 
flew at eagles. There the poet Campbell was 
married, October 11, 1803. Such old churches, 
guarding so well their treasures of history, 
are, in a special sense, the traveller's blessing. 

St. Giles's, Cripplegate, built by Queen 
Maud, in 1117, is another of those historic 
boons. I saw it, for the first time, on a gray, 
sad Sunday, a little before twilight, when a 
service was going on within its venerable walls, 
and often since I have lingered and meditated 
at its solemn shrine. The footsteps of Milton 
were sometimes on the threshold of the Cripple- 
gate, and in that ancient church he was buried, 
in 1674. The exact position of the great poet's 
grave appears to be unknown. Tradition has 
always declared that it was beneath the clerk's 



122 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

reading desk, — in the chancel, — as that desk 
stood in Milton's time. The janitor of St. 
Giles's, on the occasion of one of my visits, was 
a woman, and she indicated to me an inscribed 
stone, in the pavement of the nave, as being 
the slab that formerly marked the spot of 
Milton's interment, saying, however, that this 
mark had been moved to a place about twelve 
feet from its original position, and that the 
poet's grave was believed to be under the floor 
of a pew, on the left of the central aisle, — as 
you face toward the altar, — about the middle of 
the church. It is related, and perhaps the story 
is true, that, in the month of August, 1790, 
the remains of Milton were disinterred, that the 
coffin was opened, and that vandals wishful 
to obtain relics, for sale, took from it pieces 
of bone and bits of hair. Profanation of the 
grave of somebody certainly did then occur, but, 
according to a well reasoned argument made 
by the Shakespearean commentator, George 
Steevens, — who published a paper on the sub- 
ject, at the time of the occurrence, — the remains 
were not those of the poet. Among the vari- 




CO * •> 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 123 

ous monuments in the church, — some of them 
bearing remarkably quaint inscriptions, — there 
is a fine marble bust of Milton, made by the 
sculptor John Bacon (1740-1799), and it is 
stated, by way of enhancing its interest for the 
visitor, that King George the Third came to 
the sanctuary to see it. That memorial is 
inscribed: 

JOHN MILTON. AUTHOR OF " PARADISE LOST." 
BORN, DECEMBER, 1608, DIED, NOVEMBER, 1674. 
HIS FATHER, JOHN MILTON, DIED, MARCH, 1664. 
THEY WERE BOTH INTERRED IN THIS CHURCH. 

From Golden Lane, where the poet lived, 
you can see the towers of St. Giles's, and, 
as you walk from the place of his abode to 
the place of his burial, you seem, with solemn, 
awe-stricken emotion, to be actually following 
in his funeral train. The adjacent church- 
yard, an irregularly shaped, sequestered, lone- 
some bit of grassy ground, teeming with monu- 
ments, and hemmed in by houses, terminates, 
at one end, in a piece of the old Roman wall 
of London (a.d. 306), an adamantine fabric of 
cemented flints, which has lasted from the days 



124 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

of Constantine, and which bids fair to last 
forever. The tomb of Richard Pendrell, who 
managed the escape of King Charles the Sec- 
ond, after the battle of Worcester, in 1651, 
is in that churchyard, — a place ever since July 
8, 1891, open as a park, or garden, for public 
recreation. I shall always remember that 
strange nook, with the golden light of a sum- 
mer morning shining upon it, the birds twit- 
tering among its graves, and all around it such 
an atmosphere of solitude and rest as made 
it seem, though in the heart of a great city, 
a thousand miles from any haunt of man. 
Cromwell was married in St. Giles's church. 
I remembered, as I stood before the altar and 
conjured up that golden scene of his joy 
and hope, the place of the Lord Protector's 
coronation, in Westminster Hall; the place, 
still marked, in the Abbey, where his body 
was buried; and the wall on which his muti- 
lated corpse was exposed to the obloquy of 
the fickle populace. A very little time suffices 
to assemble equally the happiness and the 
anguish, the conquest and the defeat, the great- 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 125 

ness and the littleness of human life, and to 
cover them with silence. 

St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, another ancient and 
venerable temple, once the church of the priory 
of the nuns of St. Helen, built in the thirteenth 
century (1216), contains many relics of the 
history of England. The priory, which 
adjoined it, has long since disappeared, and 
portions of the building have been restored, 
but the noble Gothic columns and the com- 
memorative sculptures remain unchanged. 
There you can see the tombs of Sir John 
Crosby, who built Crosby Place (1466), Sir 
Thomas Gresham, who founded both Gresham 
College and the Royal Exchange in London, 
and Sir William Pickering, once Queen Eliza- 
beth's Minister to Spain and one of the 
amorous aspirants for her royal hand; and 
there, in a gloomy chapel, stands the altar at 
which, it is said, the Duke of Glo'ster received 
absolution, after the disappearance of the 
princes in the Tower. Standing at that altar, 
in the cool silence of the lonely church and the 
waning light of afternoon, it was not difficult 



126 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

to conjure up his slender, restless figure, — decked 
in the rich apparel that he loved, his handsome, 
aquiline, thoughtful face, the drooping head, the 
glittering eyes, the nervous hand that toyed with 
the dagger, — and thus the most entirely repre- 
sentative type of audacious ambition and defi- 
ant will that Poetry has combined with History 
to make immortal. Every place that Richard 
touched is haunted hy his magnetic presence. 
In this church there is the tomb of a person 
whose will provided that the key of his sepulchre 
should be placed beside it, and that the door 
should be opened once a year, for a hundred 
years. It seems to have been his expectation 
to awake and arise, but the allotted century 
has passed and his bones are still quiescent. 

How calmly they sleep, — the warriors and 
statesmen who once filled the world with the 
tumult of their deeds! If you go into St. 
Mary's, in the Temple, you will stand above the 
dust of the Crusaders and view the beautiful 
copper effigies of them, recumbent on the 
marble pavement, and feel and know, as per- 
haps you never did before, the calm that fol- 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 127 

lows the tempest. St. Mary's, built in 1240, 
was restored in 1828. It would be difficult 
to find a lovelier specimen of Norman archi- 
tecture, at once massive and airy, simple, yet 
rich with beauty in every line and scroll. 
There is only one other church in Great Brit- 
ain, it is said, which possesses, as this one 
does, a circular vestibule. The stained windows, 
both here and at St. Helen's, are very glori- 
ous. The organ at St. Mary's was selected 
by Jeffreys, afterwards infamous as the wicked 
judge. The pilgrim who pauses to muse at 
the grave of Goldsmith will sometimes hear 
its solemn, mournful tones. I heard them thus, 
and thought of Johnson's tender words, when 
he learned that Goldsmith was dead: "Poor 
Goldy was wild — very wild — but he is so no 
more." The room in which that sweet poet 
died, a heart-broken man at only forty-six, was 
but a little way from the place of his rest. The 
noises of Fleet Street are heard at his grave 
only as a distant murmur. The birds chirp 
over him, the leaves flutter down upon his 
tomb, and every breeze that sighs around the 



128 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

gray turrets of the ancient temple breathes 
out his requiem. 

Goldsmith died (1774) at No. 2 Brick Court, 
Middle Temple. Various plaees in and near 
London are associated with his name. In 17 57- 
'58 he was employed by a chemist, near Fish 
Street Hill. At the time when he was writ- 
ing his "Inquiry into the Present State of 
Polite Learning in Europe" he lived in a 
little square called Green Arbor Court, "over 
Break-neck steps," liis lodging being on the 
top floor of a three-story house. The build- 
ings in Green Arbor Court were eventually 
removed, to clear a site for the Snow Hill 
station of the London, Chatham, and Dover 
Railroad. While he was writing "The Vicar 
of Wakefield" he dwelt at a lodging in Wine 
Office Court. Fleet Street. Later he occu- 
pied a lodging at Canonbury House, Isling- 
ton, — in his time a rural region, but thickly 
settled now. In 1704) he resided in rooms in 
the Library Staircase of the Inner Temple. 

Still another interesting old church is St. 
Clement Danes, in the Strand, attractive to 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 129 

many travellers because the burial place of 
various persons notably associated with the 
Stage. There are laid the remains of Wil- 
liam Mountfort, the actor, Anne Bracegirdle's 
lover, who was murdered by Lord Mohun, 
in a midnight brawl. Nathaniel Lee, called, 
in his day, "the mad poet," a man of fine 
genius, found his grave there, as also did 
George Powell, the tragedian, of brilliant, 
deplorable memory, and Hildebrand Horden, 
cut off by the hand of violence, in the spring- 
time of his youth and promise. Horden was 
remarkable for the beauty of his person, and 
he seems to have possessed uncommon talent 
as an actor. He was stabbed to death, in 
a quarrel, at a tavern called The Rose, and 
Cibber, in his "Apology," records that con- 
temporary feminine interest relative to the 
handsome actor was so great that, after his 
body had been laid out for burial, many women 
came, some masked and others openly, to view 
it, in the shroud. Charles Coffey, the humor- 
ous, deformed dramatist and actor, lies in the 
vaults of St. Clement Danes, as also does 



130 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Thomas Rymer, historiographer for King Wil- 
liam the Third, disparager of Shakespeare, and 
author of the seventeen volumes of "Foedera." 
In St. Clement you can see the pew in which 
Dr. Johnson habitually sat, when he attended 
divine service there. It was his favorite church. 
The pew is in the gallery, and to those per- 
sons who honor the passionate integrity and 
fervent, devout zeal of the stalwart champion 
of letters, it is indeed a sacred place. In our 
time, as in his, although the profession of liter- 
ature is far more amply recognized and far 
more liberally rewarded now than it was then, 
the worker with the pen must possess readi- 
ness, versatility, large resources of invention, 
the capability of continuous industry, adaman- 
tine endurance, and that bravery of spirit which 
can and does maintain a show of cheer, however 
desolate the mind or sad the heart. The path 
of letters is not strewn with roses, and such an 
example as Dr. Johnson set, of toil, patience, 
fortitude, and fidelity, is a signal blessing to 
those who must walk in it. 



XL 

A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 

To muse over the dust of those about whom 
we have read so much, — the great actors, think- 
ers, writers, warriors, and statesmen for whom 
the play is ended and the lights are put out, — 
is to come very near to them, and to realize 
more deeply than ever before their close rela- 
tionship with our humanity; and we ought to 
be wiser and better for that experience. It is 
good, also, to seek for the favorite haunts of 
our heroes, and call them up as they were in 
their lives. One of the happiest accidents, to 
me, of a London stroll, was the finding of the 
Harp Tavern, in Russell Street, Covent Gar- 
den, near the stage door of Drury Lane 
Theatre, a tavern which was an accustomed 
haunt of that great actor, — as he seems to be, 
in all the stories of him that have been trans- 

131 



\:v: SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

mitted, Edmund Kean. Carpenters and 
masons were at work upon it when 1 entered, 
and it was necessary almost to creep, amid 

heaps of broken mortar and rubbish, beneath 

their scaffolds, in order to reach the interior. 

'There, at the end of a narrow passage, was a 
little room perhaps twenty t'eet square, with a 
low ceiling and a bare floor, in which Kean 
habitually took his pleasure, in the convivial 
society oi' fellow-actors and boon companions, 

long ago. A narrow, cushioned bench against 
the walls, a few small tables, a few chairs, sev- 
eral churchwarden pipes on the mantelpiece, and 

portraits of Disraeli and Gladstone constituted 
the furniture. A panelled wainseot and dingy 
red paper covered the walls, and some eobwebs 
depended from the grimy ceiling. The old 
room, doubtless, has been made neat ami 
comely, but then it bore the marks of hard usage 
and long neglect, and it seemed all the more 
interesting for that reason. 

Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, 
and just above it a mural tablet designates 

the spot, which is still further commemorated 



EDMUND K\:as 188 

by a death -;rj ask of the actor, placed on a little 
.shelf of dark wood and covered with glass. 
No better portrait could be desired; certainly 
/jo better one exists. In life this must have 
been a glorious face. The eyes are large and 
prominent; the brow is broad and fine; the 
mouth is wide and, obviously, sensitive; the 
chin is delicate; the nose is long, well set, and 
indicative of immense force of character. The 
expression of the face commingles refinement 
wdth great and desolate sadness. Kean, as is 
known from the testimony of one who acted 
with hirn, was at his best in passages of pathos. 
To hear him speak Othello's Farewell was to 
hear the authentic language of despair. To 
see- him when, as The Stranger, be listened to 
the song that is used in that play, was to see 
the absolute reality of hopeless sorrow. The 
mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described 
Edmund Kean in that way. She was a member 
of the company at the Walnut Street Theatre. 
Philadelphia, when he acted there, and it was 
she who sang for him, in "The Stranger, :! the 
lines, by Sheridan: 



134 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

I have a silent sorrow here, 

A grief I'll ne'er impart ; 
It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear, 

But it consumes my heart. 

Kean could thrill his hearers in the ferocious 
outbursts of Richard the Third and Sir Giles 
Overreach, but it was in tenderness and grief 
that he was supremely great, and no one will 
marvel at that who looks upon his wonder- 
ful face, — so eloquent of self -conflict and suffer- 
ing, — even in this cold, colorless mask of death. 
It is easy to judge and condemn the sins 
of weak, passionate humanity, but when we 
think of such creatures of genius as Kean, 
Byron, and Burns, we ought to consider what 
foes within themselves those wretched men were 
forced to fight, and by what agonies they 
expiated their vices and errors. This little 
tavern-room tells the whole mournful story, 
with death to point the moral, and pity to 
breathe its sigh of unavailing regret. 

Many of the frequenters of the Harp, whom 
I met, were elderly men, whose conversation 
was enriched with memories of the stage and 




EDMUND KEAN AS SIR GILES OVERREACH 



He knew himself a villain — but he deemed 

The rest no better than the thing he seem'd; . . . 

He knew himself detested, and he knew 

The hearts that loathed him crouched and dreaded too. 

BYRON. 



EDMUND KEAN 135 

with knowledge and taste in literature and 
art. They, naturally, spoke with pride of 
Kean's association with their favorite resort. 
In that room the eccentric genius had put him- 
self in pawn, to exact from the manager of 
Drury Lane Theatre the money needed to 
relieve the wants of a brother actor. Often his 
voice had been heard there, in the songs that he 
sang with so much feeling and such homely 
yet beautiful skill. In the circles of the learned 
and courtly, Kean was never at home: Lord 
Broughton, who met him, at dinner, at Hol- 
land House, records that he "ate most perti- 
naciously with his knife, and was a little too 
frequent with 'ladyships' and 'lordships'": but 
at the Harp he filled the throne and ruled the 
kingdom of the revel, and there, no doubt, 
every mood of his mind, from high thought 
and generous emotion to misanthropical bitter- 
ness and vacant levity, found its unfettered 
expression. They show a broken panel in the 
high wainscot, which was struck and smashed 
by a pewter pot that he hurled at the head of 
a person who had given him offence; and they 



136 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

relate, at the same time, — as. indeed, seems to 
have been emphatically true, — that he was the 
idol of his comrades, the first in love, pity, 
sympathy, and kindness, and would turn his 
back, for the least of them, on the nobles who 
sought his companionship. There is no better 
place than this in which to study the life of 
Edmund Kean. Old men have been met there 
who saw him on the stage, and even acted with 
him. The room is, or was, the weekly meeting- 
place and habitual nightly tryst of an ancient 
club, called "the City of Lushington," which 
has existed since the days of the Regency, and 
of which those persons were members. 

The "City," if it still exists, has its Mayor, 
Sheriff, insignia, record-book, and system of 
ceremonials; and much of wit, frolic, and 
song can (or could) be enjoyed at its civic 
feasts. The names of its four wards, — Lunacy, 
Suicide, Poverty, and Juniper, — were written 
in the four corners of the room, and whoever 
joins the club must select his ward. Sheridan 
was a member of it, and so was liis friend. 
Prince George, the Regent; and the landlord 



EDMUND KEAN 137 

of the Harp, when I knew it, Mr. McPherson, 
preserved among his relies the ehairs in whieh 
those gay companions sat, when the Wit pre- 
sided over the initiation of the Prince. It is 
thought that this elub originated out of the 
society of "The Wolves," which was formed 
by Kean's adherents, when the elder Booth 
arose to disturb his supremacy upon the stage; 
but there is no malice in it now. Its purposes 
are simply convivial and literary, and its atmos- 
phere is that of thorough good- will. John 
Coleman, in his Memoir of Samuel Phelps, 
refers to it as "a society of actors and other 
idiots," and signifies that its title was "The 
Screaming Lunatics." A colored print of 
the clubroom can be found in that eccentric 
book, "The Life of an Actor," by Pierce 
Egan, 1825. An account of the Harp, pub- 
lished in "The Victualler's Gazette," says that 
this tavern has had within its doors every 
actor of note since the days of Garrick, and 
many actresses, also, of the period of a hundred 
years ago, and it mentions, as visitants there, 
Dora Jordan, Nance Oldfield, Anne Brace- 



138 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

girdle, Kitty Clive, Harriet Mellon, Barton 
Booth, Quin, Cibber, Macklin, Grimaldi, Mme. 
Vestris, and Katharine Stephens. 

One of the gentlest and most winning traits 
in the English character is its instinct of com- 
panionship as to literature and art. Since the 
days of the Mermaid the authors and actors 
of London have dearly loved and deeply 
enjoyed such odd little fraternities of wit as 
are typified, not inaptly, by "the City of Lush- 
ington." There are no rosier hours in my 
memory than those that were passed, between 
midnight and morning, in the cosey clubs in 
London: and when dark days come, and foes 
harass, and the troubles of life annoy, it is sweet 
to remember one sacred retreat of friendship, 
across the sea, where the old armor gleamed 
in festal lights, and where one of the gentlest 
spirits that ever wore the laurel of England's 
love smiled kindly on his comrades and charmed 
them equally by the exquisite grace of his 
courtesy and the magic of his brilliant mind. 

Let no one take beyond this threshold hence 
Words uttered here in friendship's confidence. 



EDMUND KEAN 139 

That motto was on the wall of Henry 
Irving's cosey supper-room in the old Lyceum 
Theatre. Many a group of choice spirits did 
the illustrious actor assemble in that room, 
and many a night was made radiant there, by 
sparkle of conversation, glitter of wit and anec- 
dote, and kindly interchange of earnest thought. 
The place no longer exists. Time has con- 
quered. The bright groups are gone: and 
death has closed the eyes that looked so kindly 
on friendship's face and sealed the lips that 
smiled so sweet a welcome from the heart. 



XII. 

WARWICK AND KEXILWORTH. 

All the way from London to Warwick it 
rained; not heavily, but with a gentle fall. The 
gray clouds hung low over the landscape and 
softly darkened it, so that meadows of scarlet 
and emerald, the shining foliage of elms, gray 
turret, nestled cottage, and limpid river were 
as mysterious and evanescent as pictures seen 
in dreams. At Warwick the rain had fallen 
and ceased, and the walk from the station to 
the inn was on a road, or on a footpath by 
the roadside, still hard and damp with the 
water it had absorbed. A fresh wind blew 
from the fields, sweet with the rain and fra- 
grant with the odor of leaves and flowers. The 
streets of the ancient town, — entered through 
an old Norman arch, — were deserted and silent. 
It was Sunday when I first came to the coun- 

140 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 141 

try of Shakespeare, and over all the region 
there hrooded a sacred stillness peculiar to the 
time and harmonious beyond utterance with 
the sanctity of the place. As I strive to recall 
and to fix in words the impressions of that 
sublime experience, the same awe falls upon me 
now that fell upon me then. Nothing else on 
earth, — no natural scene, no relic of the past, 
no pageantry of the present, — can vie with 
the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to impress, 
to humble, and to exalt the devout spirit that 
has been nurtured at the fountain of his tran- 
scendent genius. 

A fortunate way to approach Stratford-upon- 
Avon is by Warwick and Kenilworth. Those 
places are not on a direct line of travel, but 
the scenes and associations that they success- 
ively present are such as assume a symmetrical 
order, increase in interest, and grow to a 
delightful culmination. Objects that Shake- 
speare must have seen are still visible there, 
and little by little, in contact with them, the 
pilgrim through this haunted region is men- 
tally saturated with that atmosphere of romance 



142 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

in which the youth of Shakespeare was passed, 
and by which his works and his memory are 
embalmed. No one should come abruptly 
upon the poet's home. The mind needs to be 
prepared for the impression that awaits it, and 
in this gradual approach it finds preparation, 
both suitable and delicious. The luxuriance of 
the country, its fertile fields, its brilliant foliage, 
its myriads of wild-flowers, its pomp of color 
and of physical vigor and bloom, do not fail 
to announce, to every mind, howsoever heedless, 
that this is a fit place for the birth and nurture 
of a great poet. But this is not all. As you 
stroll in the quaint streets of Warwick, as you 
drive to Kenilworth, as you muse in that poetic 
ruin, as you pause in the old graveyard in 
the valley below, as you meditate over the 
crumbling fragments of the ancient abbey, at 
every step of the way you are haunted by a 
vague sense of an impending grandeur; you 
are aware of a presence that fills and sanctifies 
the scene. The emotion that is thus inspired 
is very glorious, never to be elsewhere felt, and 
never to be forgotten. 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 143 

The cyclopaedias and the guide-books dilate, 
with much particularity and characteristic exu- 
berance, upon Warwick Castle and other great 
features of Warwickshire, but the attribute 
that all such records omit is the atmosphere; 
and this, perhaps, is rather to be indicated 
than described. The prevailing quality of it 
is a certain high and sweet solemnity, — a feel- 
ing kindred with the placid, happy melancholy 
that steals over the mind, when, on a sombre 
afternoon in autumn, you stand in the church- 
yard, and listen, amid rustling branches and 
sighing grass, to the low music of distant 
organ and chanting choir. Peace, haunted by 
romance, dwells here, in reverie. The great 
tower of Warwick, based in silver Avon and 
pictured in its slumbering waters, seems mus- 
ing upon the centuries, over which it has 
watched, and full of unspeakable knowledge 
and thought. The dark, massive gateways of 
the town and the timber-crossed fronts of its 
antique houses live on in the same strange 
dream and perfect repose, and all along the 
drive to Kenilworth are equal images of 



144 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

rest, — a rest in which there is nothing supine 
or sluggish, no element of death or decay, but 
in which passion, imagination, beauty, and 
melancholy, seized at their topmost poise, seem 
crystallized in eternal calm. What opulence 
of splendid life is vital forever in Kenilworth's 
crumbling ruin there are no words to say: what 
pomp of royal banners! what dignity of radi- 
ant cavaliers! what loveliness of stately and 
exquisite ladies! what magnificence of ban- 
quets! what wealth of pageantry! what lustre 
of illumination! The same festal music that 
the old poet Gascoigne heard there, three hun- 
dred years ago, is still sounding on, to-day. 
The proud, cruel Leicester still walks in his 
vaulted hall. The imperious face of the Virgin 
Queen still, from her dais, looks down on 
plumed courtiers and jewelled dames, and still 
the moonlight, streaming through the turret- 
window, falls on the white bosom and the 
large, startled, black eyes of Amy Robsart, 
waiting for her lover. The gaze of the pil- 
grim, indeed, rests only upon old, gray, broken 
walls, overgrown with green moss and ivy, and 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 145 

pierced by irregular casements through which 
the sun shines, and the winds blow, and the 
rains drive, and the birds fly, amid utter deso- 
lation. But silence and ruin are here alike 
eloquent and awful, and, much as the place 
impresses you by what remains, it impresses 
you far more by what has vanished. Ambi- 
tion, love, pleasure, power, misery, tragedy — 
these are gone, and being gone they are immor- 
tal. I plucked, in the garden of Kenilworth, 
one of the most brilliant red roses that ever 
grew, and as I pressed it to my lips I seemed 
to touch the lips of that superb, bewildering 
beauty who outweighed England's crown (at 
least in story), and whose spirit is the ever- 
lasting genius of the place. 

There is a row of cottages opposite to the 
ruins of the castle, in which contentment seems 
to have made her home. The ivy embowers 
them; the roses cluster around their little win- 
dows; the green-sward slopes away, in front, 
from large flat stones that are embedded in 
the mossy sod before their doors. Down in 
the valley, near by, your steps stray through 



146 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

an ancient graveyard, — in which stands the par- 
ish church, a carefully restored building of the 
eleventh century, with tower, and clock, and 
bell, — and past a few fragments of the Abbey 
and Monastery of St. Mary's, destroyed in 
1538. At many another point, on the roads 
betwixt Warwick and Kenilworth and Strat- 
ford, I came upon such nests of cosey, rustic 
quiet and seeming happiness. They build their 
country houses low, in England, so that the 
trees overhang them, and the cool, friendly, 
flower-gemmed earth, — parent, and stay, and 
bourne of mortal life, — is tenderly taken into 
their companionship. At Kenilworth, as else- 
where, at such places as Marlowe, Henley, 
Richmond, Maidenhead, Cookham, and the 
region round about Windsor, I saw many a 
sweet nook where tired life might be content 
to lay down its burden and enter into its rest. 
In all true love of country, — a passion that 
seems to be more deeply felt in England than 
anywhere else, — there is love for the soil itself: 
and, surely, that sentiment in the human heart 
is both natural and pious which inspires and 





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WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 147 

perpetuates man's desire that where he found 
his cradle he may also find his grave. 

Under a cloudy sky and through a land- 
scape still wet and shining with recent rain the 
drive to Stratford was a pleasure so exquisite 
that at last it became a pain. Just as the car- 
riage reached the junction of the Warwick and 
Snitterfleld roads a ray of sunshine, streaming 
through a rift in the clouds, fell upon the 
neighboring hillside, scarlet with poppies, and 
lit the scene as with the glory of a celestial 
benediction. That sunburst, neither growing 
larger nor coming nearer, followed all the way 
to Stratford, but there, on a sudden, the clouds 
were lifted and dispersed, and "fair daylight" 
flooded the whole green countryside. The after- 
noon sun was still high in heaven when I 
alighted at the Red Horse and entered the little 
parlor of Washington Irving. They keep the 
room much as it was when he saw it, for they 
are aware of his gentle genius and grateful for 
his appreciative words. There is the old- 
fashioned hair-cloth armchair in which he sat, on 
that night of memory and of musing which he 



148 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

has described in "The Sketch Book.' 1 A brass 
plate is affixed to it, inscribed with bis name. 
The American pilgrim to Stratford looks with 
tender interest on the old fireplace, and reads the 
memorials of Irving' that are hung upon the 
walls, and it is no small comfort there to reflect 
that our illustrious countryman, — whose name 
will be remembered with honor, as long as litera- 
ture is prized, — was the first, in modern days, 
to celebrate the beauties and to declare the 
poetic charm of the birthplace of Shakespeare. 



XIII. 

FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD. 

Once again, as it did on that delicious sum- 
mer afternoon which is forever memorable in 
my life, the golden glory of the setting sun 
burns on the gray spire of Stratford church, 
and on the ancient graveyard below, — wherein 
the mossy stones lean this way and that, in 
sweet and orderly confusion, — and on the 
peaceful avenue of limes, and on the bur- 
nished water of silver Avon. The tall, pointed, 
many-colored windows of the church glint in 
the evening light. A cool, fragrant wind is 
stirring the branches and the grass. The song- 
birds, calling to their mates or sporting in the 
wanton pleasure of their airy life, are circling 
over the church roof or hiding in little crev- 
ices of its walls. On the vacant meadows 
across the river stretch away the long, level 

149 



150 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

shadows of the stately elms. Here and there, 
upon the river's brink, are pairs of what seem 
lovers, strolling by the reedy marge, or sitting 
upon the low tombs, in the Sabbath quiet. As 
the sun sinks and the dusk deepens, two figures 
of infirm old women, clad in black, pass with 
slow, feeble steps through the avenue of limes, 
and vanish around an angle of the church, — 
which now stands all in shadow: and no 
sound is heard but the faint rustling of the 
leaves. 

Onee again, as on that sacred night, the 
streets of Stratford are deserted and silent 
under the star-lit sky, and I am standing, in 
the dusky light, at the door of the cottage in 
which Shakespeare was born. It is empty and 
still, and in all the neighborhood there is no 
stir nor sign of life; but the quaint casements 
and gables of this haunted house, its antique 
porch, and the great timbers that cross its 
front are luminous with a lustre of their own, 
so that I see them with perfect vision. I 
stand there a long time, and I know that I 
am to remember these sights forever, as I see 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD 151 

them now. After a while, with lingering steps, 
I turn away from this marvellous spot, and, 
presently, passing through a narrow, winding 
lane, I walk in the High Street of the town, 
and mark, at the end of the prospect, the 
illuminated clock in the tower of the chapel of 
the Holy Cross. A few chance-directed steps 
hring me to what was New Place once, where 
Shakespeare died; and there again I pause, 
and long remain in meditation, gazing into the 
enclosed garden, where, under screens of wire, 
are fragments of mortar and stone. These, — 
although I do not then know it, — are the 
remains of the foundation of Shakespeare's 
house. The night wanes, but still I walk in 
Stratford streets, and by and by I am stand- 
ing on the bridge that spans the Avon, and 
looking down at the thick-clustering stars 
reflected in its black and silent stream. At 
last, under the roof of the Red Horse, I sink 
into a troubled slumber, from which, soon, a 
strain of celestial music, strong, sweet, jubilant, 
and splendid, awakens me in an instant; and 
I start up in bed, — to find that all around 



152 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

me is still as death; and then, drowsily, far- 
off, the bell strikes three, in its weird, lone- 
some tower. 

Every pilgrim to Stratford knows, in a 
general way, what he will there behold. Copi- 
ous description of its Shakespearean associa- 
tions has made the place familiar to the world. 
Yet those Shakespearean associations keep a 
perennial freshness, and are equally a surprise 
to the sight and a wonder to the mind. Though 
more than three centuries old they are not 
stricken with age or decay. The house in 
Henley Street, in which, according to accepted 
tradition, Shakespeare was born, has been from 
time to time repaired, and so it has been 
kept sound, without having been very greatly 
changed from what it was in Shakespeare's 
youth. The kind ladies, Miss Maria and Miss 
Caroline Chattaway, who take care of it (1877) 
and, with much pride and courtesy, show it to 
the visitor, called my attention to a bit of the 
ceiling of an upper chamber, — the room of 
Shakespeare's birth, — which had begun to 
droop, and had been skilfully secured with lit- 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD 153 

tie iron laths. It is in this room that the 
numerous autographs are scrawled over the 
ceiling and walls. One side of the chimney- 
piece is called "The Actor's Pillar," so richly 
is it adorned with the names of actors, — 
Edmund Kean's signature being among them, 
and still legible. On one of the window-panes, 
cut with a diamond, is the name of "W. Scott," 
and all the panes are scratched with signa- 
tures, — making you think of Douglas Jerrold's 
remark on bad Shakespearean commentators, 
that they resemble persons who write on 
glass with diamonds, and obscure the light 
with a multitude of scratches. The floor of 
that room, uncarpeted and almost snow-white 
with much washing, seems still as hard as iron; 
yet its boards have been hollowed by wear, 
and the heads of the old nails that fasten it 
down gleam like polished silver. You can sit 
in an antique chair, in a corner of it, if you 
like, and think unutterable things. There is, 
certainly, no word that can even remotely sug- 
gest the feeling with which you are there over- 
whelmed. You can sit also in the room below, 



154 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

in the seat, in the corner of the wide fire- 
place, that Shakespeare when a boy may often 
have occupied. They keep only a few pieces of 
furniture in any part of the cottage. One 
room is devoted to Shakespearean relics, — 
more or less authentic, — one of which is a 
schoolboy's desk, that was obtained from the old 
Grammar-School, in Church Street, in which, 
it is believed, Shakespeare was once a pupil. 
At the back of the cottage, which is isolated 
from contiguous structures, is a pleasant gar- 
den, and at one side is a cosey little cabin, the 
home of order and of pious decorum, for the cus- 
todians of the Shakespeare House. If you are 
a favored visitor, you will, perhaps, receive from 
that garden, at parting, all the flowers, prettily 
mounted on a sheet of paper, that Ophelia 
names, in the scene of her madness. "There's 
rosemary, that's for remembrance: . . . and 
there is pansies, that's for thoughts: . . . 
there's fennel for you, and columbines: there's 
rue for you: . . . there's a daisy: — I would 
give you some violets, but they withered all 
when my father died." 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD 155 

The ample knowledge that Shakespeare had 
of plants and flowers, and the loving appre- 
ciation with which he describes pastoral scen- 
ery, are readily understood by the observant 
rambler in the Stratford country. There is a 
walk across the fields, to Shottery, that the 
poet must often have taken, in the days of 
his courtship of Anne Hathaway. The path 
to that hamlet passes through pastures and 
gardens, flecked with those brilliant scarlet 
poppies that are so radiant and bewitching in 
the English landscape. To have grown up 
amid such surroundings, and, above all, to 
have experienced amid them the passion of 
love, must have been, for Shakespeare, the 
intuitive acquirement of ample and specific 
knowledge of their manifold beauties. It 
would be hard to find a sweeter rustic retreat 
than Anne Hathaway 's cottage is, even now. 
Tall trees embower it, and over its porches, 
and along its picturesque, irregular front, and 
on its thatched roof, the woodbine and the ivy 
climb, and there are wild roses and maiden's 
blush. For the young poet's wooing no place 



156 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

could be fitter. He would always remember it 
with tender joy. They preserve, in that cot- 
tage, an old settle, by the fireside, whereon 
the lovers may have sat together: it formerly 
stood outside the door: and in a little chamber 
next the roof there is an antique, carved bed- 
stead, that Anne Hathaway owned. That cot- 
tage, it is thought, continued to be Anne's 
home for several years of her married life, — 
her husband being absent in London, and 
sometimes coming down to visit her, at Shot- 
tery. "He was wont," says John Aubrey, the 
antiquary, writing in 1680, "to go to his native 
country once a year." The last surviving 
descendant of the Hathaway family, Mrs. 
Baker, was living in the cottage, when I first 
saw it (she is dead now), and it was her 
custom to welcome, with homely hospitality, 
the wanderers, from all lands, seeking, — in a 
sympathy and reverence honorable to human 
nature, — the shrine of Shakespeare's love. 
There is one such wanderer who will never 
forget the farewell clasp of that kind woman's 
hand, and who has never parted with her gift 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD 157 

of woodbine and roses from the porch of Anne 
Hathaway 's cottage. 

In England it is living, more than writing 
about it, that is esteemed by intellectual, cul- 
tivated, gentle persons. They prize good writ- 
ing, but they prize noble living far more. This 
is an ingrained principle, and not an artificial 
habit, and this principle must have been as 
potent in Shakespeare's age as it is to-day. 
Nothing could be more natural than that this 
great writer should think less of his works 
than of the establishment of his home. He 
would desire, having gained a fortune, to 
dwell in his native place, to enjoy the com- 
panionship and esteem of his neighbors, to 
participate in their pleasures, to help them 
in their troubles, to aid in the improvement 
and embellishment of the town, to deepen 
his hold upon the affections of all around 
him, and to feel that, at last, honored and 
lamented, his ashes would be laid in the 
village church where he had worshipped and 
with which his earliest recollections were 
entwined. 



158 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

It was in 1597, about twelve years after he 
first went to London, that the poet bought the 
estate of New Place, but according to the 
authority of HaUiwell-Phillipps his final retire- 
ment to that home did not occur till some time 
between the autumn oi' 1609 and the summer of 
Kill; while, according to a record mentioned 
by M alone, he retained a residence near the 
[Bear Garden, in Southwark, London, till 1608, 
The mansion oi' New Place was altered hv 
Sir Hugh Clopton, who owned it toward the 
middle oi' the eighteenth century, and it was 
destroyed by the Rev, Francis Gastrell, in 17.V.>. 
The grounds, which have been reclaimed. 
chiefly through the zeal oi' HaUiwell-Phillipps, — 
are laid out correspondent to the aspect which 
they are believed to have presented when Shake- 
speare owned them. His lawn, his orchard, and 
his garden are indicated, and a scion of his mul- 
berry is growing on the spot where that famous 
tree once flourished. Von can see a part of 
the foundation of the old house. It was made 
of brick and timber; it seems to have had 
gables, and no doubt it was fasliioned with 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD 159 

graceful curves and broken lines of the Tudor 
architecture. They keep, upon the lawn, a 
stone, of considerable size, that once sur- 
mounted its door. The site, — still central and 
commodious, — is on the corner of Church 
Street and Chapel Lane, and on the opposite 
corner stands now, as it has stood for more 
than eight hundred years, the chapel of the 
Holy Cross, with square, dark tower, fretted 
parapet, pointed casements, and Xorman 
porch, — one of the most romantic, picturesque 
churches in England. It was easy, when mus- 
ing on that storied spot, to fancy Shakespeare, 
in the gloaming of a summer day, strolling on 
the lawn, beneath his elms, and listening to the 
solemn music of the organ; or to think of 
him as stepping forth from his study, in the 
late and lonesome hours of the night, and 
pausing to "count the clock," or note "the 
exhalations whizzing in the air." 

The funeral train of Shakespeare, moving 
from New Place to Stratford Church, had but 
a little way to go. The river, surely, must have 
seemed to hush its murmurs, the trees to droop 



160 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

their branches, the sunshine to grow dim, as 
that sad procession passed! His grave is under 
the gray pavement of the chancel, near the 
altar, and his wife and one of his daughters 
are buried beside him. The pilgrim who 
reads upon the gravestone those rugged lines 
of entreaty and solemn imprecation that guard 
the poet's rest feels no doubt that he is 
listening to his living voice, — for he has now 
seen the enchanting beauty of the place, and 
he has now felt what passionate affection it 
can inspire. Feeling, not literary manner, 
would naturally have prompted that supplica- 
tion and curse. Nor does such a pilgrim 
doubt, when gazing on the painted bust, above 
the grave, — made by Gerard Jonson, stone- 
cutter, — that he beholds the authentic face of 
Shakespeare. It is not the heavy face of the 
images and pictures that purport to be copies 
of it. There is a touch of naturalness in it 
that those copies do not reproduce. The 
expression is thoughtful, and, if a little aus- 
tere, is, nevertheless, benignant. Shakespeare, 
according to the bust as it was when placed 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD 161 

above the tomb, had hazel eyes and auburn 
hair, and the colors of his raiment were scarlet 
and black. Those colors, once effaced with 
white paint, have been restored. Being painted, 
and being placed at a considerable height on 
the church wall, the bust does not reveal a fact 
perceptible on close inspection, and, indeed, in 
a cast from it (a fact long ago discerned and 
pointed out by Chantrey), that it was made 
from a mask of the dead face. One of the 
cheeks is slightly swollen, and the tongue, very 
slightly protruded, is held between the lips. 
The burial of Shakespeare's body in the 
chancel was, as observed by Halliwell-Phillipps, 
due to "the circumstance of its then being the 
legal and customary burial-place of the owners 
of the tithes," of whom the poet was one: but 
it seems to warrant the inference that he was 
esteemed, in the community of Stratford, as a 
man of religious character. "I commend my 
soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, 
and assuredly believing, through the only merits 
of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made par- 
taker of life everlasting." So said Shakespeare, 



162 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

in his last Will, bowing in humble reverence, 
the mightiest mind — as vast and limitless in the 
power to comprehend as to express — that ever 
wore the garment of mortality. 

Once again there is a sound of organ music, 
very low and soft, in Stratford Church, and the 
dim light, broken by the richly stained win- 
dow's, streams across the dusky chancel, filling 
the still air with opal haze and flooding those 
gray gravestones with its mellow radiance. 
Not a word is spoken; but, at intervals, the 
rustle of the leaves is audible in a sighing 
wind. What visions are these that suddenly 
fill the region! What royal faces of monarchs, 
proud with power, or pallid with anguish! 
what sw r eet, imperial women, gleeful with 
happy youth and love, or staring and rigid in 
tearless woe! what warriors, with serpent dia- 
dems, defiant of death and hell! The mourn- 
ful eyes of Hamlet; the wild countenance of 
Lear; Ariel with his harp, and Prospero with 
his wand! Here is no death! All these, and 
more, are immortal shapes; and he that made 
them so, although his mortal part be but a 




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FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD 163 

handful of dust in that gloomy crypt, is a 
glorious angel, beyond the stars. 

HEAVEN'S HOUR. 

Can I forget? — no, never while my soul 

Lives to remember! that imperial night 

When through the spectral church I heard them roll, 

Those organ tones of glory, and my sight 

Grew dim with tears, while ever new delight 

Throbbed in my heart, and through the shadowy dread 

The pale ghosts wandered, and a deathly chill 

Froze all my being, — the mysterious thrill 

That tells the awful presence of the dead! 

Yet not the dead, but strayed from heavenly bowers, 

Pure souls that live with other life than ours: 

For sure I am that ecstasy of sound 

Lured one sweet spirit from his holy ground, 

Who dwells in the perpetual land of flowers. 

( Written on hearing Organ Music, at night, in the 
Shakespeare Church, at Stratford, September 18, 1890.) 



XIV. 
THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

I pray you let us satisfy our eyes 

With the memorials, and the things of fame, 

That do renown this city. 

—Twelfth Night. 

It is the everlasting glory of Stratford- 
upon-Avon that it was the birthplace of Shake- 
speare. Situated in the heart of beautiful 
Warwickshire, it nestles cosily in an atmos- 
phere of tranquil loveliness and it is sur- 
rounded by everything that gentle rural scen- 
ery can provide to soothe the mind and to 
nurture contentment. It stands upon a plain, 
almost in the centre of England, through 
which, between low green hills that roll away 
on either side, the Avon flows, in many capri- 
cious windings, to the Severn, and so to the 
sea. The country in its neighborhood is under 

164 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 165 

perfect cultivation, and for many miles around 
presents the appearance of a superb park. 
Portions of the land are devoted to crops and 
pasture; other portions are thickly wooded with 
oak, elm, willow, and chestnut; the meadows 
are intersected by hedges of fragrant haw- 
thorn, and the region smiles with flowers. Old 
manor-houses, half -hidden among the trees, and 
thatched cottages embowered in roses are 
sprinkled through the surrounding landscape, 
and all the roads that converge upon this 
point, — from Birmingham, Warwick, Shipton, 
Bidford, Alcester, Evesham, Worcester, and 
other contiguous towns, — wind, in sun and 
shadow, through a sod of green velvet, swept 
by the cool, sweet winds of the English sum- 
mer. Such felicities of situation and such 
accessories of beauty, however, are not unusual 
in England, and Stratford, were it not hal- 
lowed by association, though it would always 
hold a place among the pleasant memories 
of the traveller, would not have become a 
shrine for the homage of the world. To 
Shakespeare it owes its renown; from Shake- 



166 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

speare it derives the bulk of its prosperity. 
To visit Stratford is to tread with affection- 
ate veneration in the footsteps of the poet. 
To write about Stratford is to write about 
Shakespeare. 

More than three hundred years have passed 
since the birth of the poet, and many changes 
have occurred in his native town within that 
period. The Stratford of Shakespeare's time 
was built principally of timber, and it con- 
tained about fourteen hundred inhabitants. Its 
population has grown to be more than ten thou- 
sand. New dwellings have arisen where once 
were fields of grain or grass, glorious with the 
shimmering lustre of the scarlet poppy. Many 
of the older buildings have been altered. 
Manufacture has been stimulated into pros- 
perous activity. The Avon has been spanned 
by a new bridge, of iron, — a path for pedes- 
trians, adjacent to Clopton's bridge of stone. 
(The iron bridge was opened November 23, 
1827.) The streets have been levelled, swept, 
rolled, and garnished, till the town resembles a 
Flemish drawing, of the Middle Ages. Even 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 167 

the Shakespeare cottage, the old "Harvard 
house," in High Street, and the two old 
churches, — authentic and splendid memorials 
of a distant, storied past, — have been, more or 
less, "restored." If the poet could walk again 
through his accustomed haunts, though he would 
see the same smiling country round about, and 
hear, as of old, the ripple of the Avon mur- 
muring in its summer sleep, his eyes would rest 
on few objects that once he knew. Yet, there 
are the paths that Shakespeare often trod; 
there stands the house in which he was born; 
there is the school in which he was taught; 
there is the cottage in which he wooed his 
sweetheart; there are the traces and relics of 
the mansion in which he died; and there is 
the church that keeps his dust, forever conse- 
crated by the reverence of mankind. 

In shape the town of Stratford somewhat 
resembles a large cross, which is formed by 
High Street, running nearly north and south, 
and Bridge Street and Wood Street, running 
nearly east and west. From these, which are 
main avenues, many and devious branches radi- 



168 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

ate. A few of the streets are broad and 
straight, but some of them are narrow and 
crooked. High and Bridge streets intersect 
each other, at the centre of the town, where 
stands the Market House, an ugly building, 
of the period of King George the Fourth, with 
an illuminated clock in its belfry, facing east- 
ward toward the old stone bridge, with four- 
teen arches, — the bridge that Sir Hugh Clop- 
ton built across the Avon, in the reign of 
King Henry the Seventh, a bridge 376 yards 
long and about 48 feet wide, which, except for 
alteration of the west end of it, made in 1814, 
remains unchanged. A cross once stood at the 
corner of High Street and Wood Street, and 
near that cross were a pump and a well. From 
that central point a few steps will bring the 
traveller to the birthplace of Shakespeare. It 
is a small, two-story cottage of timber and 
plaster, on the north side of Henley Street, 
in the western part of the town. It must have 
been, in its pristine days, finer than most of 
the dwellings in its neighborhood. The one- 
story house, with attic windows, was, almost 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 169 

invariably, the kind of building erected in 
English country towns, till the seventeenth cen- 
tury. This cottage, besides its two stories, was 
provided with dormer-windows, and with a 
pent-house over its door, and it was built and 
appointed in a manner both opulent and sub- 
stantial. Its age is unknown, but the his- 
tory of Stratford begins at a period three hun- 
dred years anterior to William the Conqueror, 
and fancy, therefore, is allowed ample room 
to exaggerate its antiquity. 

That house was bought, and presumably occu- 
pied, by Shakespeare's father in 1555, and in it he 
resided till his death, in 1601, when it descended, 
by inheritance, to the poet. Such is the sub- 
stance of the complex documentaiy evidence 
and of the emphatic tradition that consecrate 
this cottage as the birthplace of Shakespeare. 
The point has never been settled. John Shake- 
speare, the father, was, in 1564, the owner, not 
only of the house in Henley Street, but of 
another, in Greenhill Street. William Shake- 
speare might have been born in either of those 
dwellings. Tradition, however, has sanctified 



170 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the Henley Street cottage, and this, accord- 
ingly, as Shakespeare's cradle, will be piously 
guarded, to a late posterity. 

The Birthplace has survived many and seri- 
ous vicissitudes. By Shakespeare's Will it was 
bequeathed to his sister Joan, Mrs. William 
Hart, to be held by her, under the yearly rent 
of twelvepence, during her life, and, at her 
death, to revert to his daughter, Susanna, and 
to her descendants. His sister Joan appears 
to have been living there at the time of his 
decease, in 1616. She is known to have been 
living there in 1639, twenty-three years later, 
and doubtless she resided there till her death, in 
1646. The estate then passed to Susanna, — 
Mrs. John Hall, — from whom, in 1649, it 
descended to her grandchild, Lady Barnard, 
who left it to her kinsmen, Thomas and George 
Hart, grandsons of Joan. In that line of 
descent it continued, subject to many of those 
infringements which are incidental to poverty, 
till 1806, when William Shakespeare Hart, the 
seventh in collateral kinship from the poet, 
sold it to Thomas Court, from whose family 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 171 

it was, at last, purchased for the British nation. 
Meantime the property, which originally con- 
sisted of two tenements and a considerable 
tract of adjacent land, had, little by little, been 
curtailed of its fair proportions, by the sale 
of its gardens and orchards. The two tene- 
ments, — two in one, that is, — had been sub- 
divided. A part of the building became an 
inn, at first called The Maidenhead, after- 
ward The Swan, and finally The Swan and 
Maidenhead. Another part of it became a 
butcher's shop. The old dormer-windows and 
the pent-house were removed. A brick casing 
was placed upon the tavern end of the struc- 
ture. In front of the butcher's shop appeared 
a sign, announcing, "William Shakespeare 
was born in this house: N.B. — A Horse and 
Taxed Cart to Let." Still later, another 
legend appeared, vouching that "the immortal 
Shakespeare was born in this house." From 
1793 till 1820 Thomas and Mary Hornby, 
connections by marriage with the Hart family, 
lived in the Shakespeare cottage, — which then 
had become a resort of literary pilgrims, — 



172 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

and Mary Hornby, who assumed to be a poet 
and wrote tragedy, comedy, and philosophy, 
took delight in exhibiting its rooms to visitors. 
During the reign of that eccentric custodian 
the low ceilings and whitewashed walls of its 
several chambers became covered with auto- 
graphs, scrawled thereon by manj r enthusiasts, 
including some of the most famous persons in 
Europe. In 1820 Mary Hornby was requested 
to leave the premises. She did not wish to go. 
She could not endure the thought of a suc- 
cessor. "After me, the deluge!" She was 
obliged to abdicate; but she conveyed away all 
the furniture and relics alleged to be connected 
with Shakespeare's family, and she hastily 
whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a small 
part of the wall of that upper room, the cham- 
ber in which "nature's darling" first saw the 
light, escaped that act of spiteful resentment. 
On the space behind its door can still be read 
many names, with dates affixed, ranging back 
from 1820 to 1729. Among those names is 
that of Dora Jordan, the fascinating actress, 
who wrote it there, June 2, 1809. Much of 




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HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 173 

Mary Hornby's whitewash, which chanced to 
be unsized, was afterward removed, so that 
her work of obliteration proved successful only 
in part. Other names have been added to that 
singular, chaotic scroll of worshippers. Sir 
Walter Scott, Rogers, Charles Kean, Thack- 
eray, Tennyson, and Dickens are among the 
votaries of genius who there and thus recorded 
their presence. Scott visited the cottage in 
August, 1821, and at that time scratched his 
name on the window-pane. He had previously, 
in 1815, visited Kenilworth. He was in Strat- 
ford again in 1828, and on April 8, that year, 
he went to Shakespeare's grave, and subse- 
quently drove to Charlecote. The visit of 
Byron has been incorrectly assigned to the 
year 1816. It occurred on August 28, prob- 
ably in 1812. 

The successors of Mary Hornby guarded 
their charge with pious care. The value of the 
old Shakespeare cottage slowly grew more 
evident to the English people. Washington 
Irving made a pilgrimage to Stratford and 
recounted it in his felicitous "Sketch Book." 



174 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Yet it was not until P. T. Barnum, of the 
United States, made a proposition to buy 
Shakespeare's house, and convey it to America, 
that the literary enthusiasm of Great Britain 
was made to take a practical shape, and that 
venerated, inestimable relic became, in 1847, 
a national possession. In 18."3(> John Shake- 
speare, of Worthington Field, near Ashby-de- 
la-Zouche, gave the money necessary to pay for 
the restoration of it, and within the next 
two years, under the superintendence of 
Edward Gibbs and William Iloltom, of Strat- 
ford, it was isolated by the demolition of the 
cottages at its sides and in the rear, repaired 
wherever decay was visible, and set in order. 
The builders of that house must have done 
their work thoroughly, for, even after many 
years of rough usage and of slow impairment, 
the great timbers remain solid, the plastered 
walls are firm, the huge chimney-stack is perma- 
nent, and the ancient floor only denotes, by 
the channelled aspect of its boards and the 
gleaming heads of the nails which fasten 
them down, that it is very old. The cottage 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 175 

was built, according to ancient custom in Eng- 
lish towns, close to the edge of the street, so 
that the front door affords direct access to one 
of the principal rooms. The ceiling of that room 
is low. The floor is made of slabs. Within 
the fire-place, on each side, a seat is fashioned 
in the brick-work; and there, as it is pleasant 
to imagine, the boy-poet often sat, on winter 
nights, gazing dreamily into the flames, and 
building castles in that fairy-land of fancy 
which was his celestial inheritance. You pres- 
ently pass from that room, by a narrow, well- 
worn staircase, to the chamber above, which is 
shown as the place of the poet's birth. An 
antique chair, of the sixteenth century, stands 
in the right-hand corner. At the left is a 
small fire-place. Around the walls are visible 
the great beams which are the framework of 
the building, — beams of seasoned oak, that will 
last for ages. Opposite to the chamber door 
is a threefold casement, the original window, 
containing sixty panes of glass scrawled all 
over with names that visitors have written with 
diamonds. The ceiling is so low that you can 



176 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

easily touch it with uplifted hand. This room, 
and indeed the whole structure, is as polished 
and orderly as any waxen, royal palace hall, 
and it affects the enthusiastic pilgrim much 
as old lace does, that has heen treasured in 
lavender or jasmine. Those w T alls, which no 
one is now permitted to mar, were, naturally, 
the favorite scroll of the Shakespeare votaries 
of long ago. Much of the plaster hears marks 
of the pencil of reverence or of vanity. Hun- 
dreds of names are written there, some of them 
famous but most of them obscure, and all 
destined to perish. On the chimney-piece at 
the right of the fire-place, which is named "The 
Actor's Pillar," many actors have inscribed 
their signatures. Edmund Kean wrote his 
name there, — with what veneration it is vain 
even to try to imagine. The list of actors 
includes, among others, Elliston, Buckstone, 
G. V. Brooke, Eliza Vestris, Charles Mathews, 
and Fanny Fitzwilliam. Sir Walter recorded 
himself as "W. Scott." The name of Thack- 
eray appears on the ceiling, and upon the 
beam across the centre is that of Helen Faucit. 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 177 

The name of Vestris is written near the fire- 
place. The names of Mark Lemon and Charles 
Dickens are together, on the opposite wall. 
Lord Byron wrote his name there, but it has 
disappeared. But it is not of these offerings 
of fealty that you think, when you sit and 
muse in that mysterious chamber. As once 
again I conjure up that solemn scene, the sun- 
shine rests in checkered squares upon the ancient 
floor, the motes swim in the sunbeams, the air 
is very cold, the place is as hushed as death, 
and over it there broods an atmosphere of sus- 
pense and mystical desolation, — a sense of some 
tremendous energy stricken dumb and frozen 
into silence and past and gone forever. 

Opposite to the birth-chamber, at the rear, 
there is a small room, in which is displayed 
"the Stratford Portrait" of the poet. That 
painting is said to have been owned by the 
Clopton family, and to have fallen into the 
hands of William Hunt, the town clerk of 
Stratford, who bought the Clopton mansion, in 
1758. Its authenticity is dubious. It does 
not appear to have been valued, and, although 



178 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

it remained in the house, it was east away 
among lumber and rubbish. By and by it was 
painted over, by an unknown hand, and so 
made to represent another subject. Later the 
boys of the tribe of Hunt were accustomed to 
use it as a target for their arrows. At last, 
after the lapse of a century, the grandson of 
Hunt showed it, by chance, to Simon Collins, an 
artist, who surmised that a portrait might exist 
beneath its muddy surface. It was carefully 
cleaned. A thick beard was removed, and a face 
said to be that of Shakespeare emerged upon the 
canvas. It is not pretended that this portrait 
was painted in Shakespeare's time. The close 
resemblance that it bears, — in attitude, dress, 
colors, and other peculiarities, — to the painted 
bust of the poet, in Stratford church, seems 
to indicate that it was based upon that work. 
On a brass plate affixed to it is the following 
inscription: 

This portrait of Shakespeare, after being in the 
possession of Mr. William Oakes Hunt, town-clerk of 
Stratford, and his family for upwards of a century, 
was restored to its original condition by Mr. Simon 




WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



'From Martin Droeshout's Engraving in the First Folio. 

THIS FIGURE, THAT THOU HERE SEEST PUT, 

IT WAS FOR GENTLE SHAKESPEARE CUT; 
WHEREIN THE GRAVER HAD A STRIFE 

WITH NATURE, TO OUT-DO THE LIFE: 
O, COULD HE BUT HAVE DRAWN HIS WIT 

AS WELL IN BRASS AS HE HATH HIT 
HIS FACE, THE PRINT WOULD THEN SURPASS 

ALL THAT WAS EVER WRIT IN BRASS. 
BUT SINCE HE CANNOT, READER, LOOK 

NOT ON HIS PICTURE, BUT HIS BOOK. 

HUN J ON SON. 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 179 

Collins of London, and, being considered a portrait of 
much interest and value, was given by Mr. Hunt to the 
town of Stratford-upon-Avon, to be preserved in 
Shakespeare's house, 23d April, 1862. 

There, accordingly, it remains, and in asso- 
ciation with several other dubious presentments 
of the poet, cheerfully adds to the mental con- 
fusion of the observer who would form an 
accurate idea of Shakespeare's appearance. 
The truth is that there are only two representa- 
tions of Shakespeare in existence which can be 
considered authentic, — the Droeshout portrait 
and the Gerard Jonson bust. They are not 
perfect works of art; they, probably, do not 
faithfully depict the original; but they were 
seen and accepted by persons to whom Shake- 
speare had been a companion. The bust was 
sanctioned by his widow and children; the por- 
trait was sanctioned by his friend Ben Jonson, 
and by his brother actors, Heminge and Con- 
dell, who prefixed it, in 1623, to the first folio 
of his works. 

Standing among the relics that have been 
gathered into a museum in a room on the 



180 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

ground-floor of the cottage, it is essential to 
remember how often ''the wish is father to the 
thought" that sanctifies the uncertain memo- 
rials of the distant past. Several of the most 
suggestive documents, though, which bear upon 
the incomplete record of Shakespeare's life 
are preserved in this place. Here is a deed, 
made in 1596, which proves that this house 
was his father's residence. Here is the only 
letter addressed to him that is known to exist, — 
the letter of Richard Quiney, 1598, asking for 
the loan of thirty pounds. Here is a declara- 
tion in a suit, in 1004. to recover the price of 
some malt that he had sold to a townsman, — 
showing that he could attend strictly to prac- 
tical affairs. Here is a deed, dated 1(509, on 
which is the autograph o\' his brother Gilbert, 
who, surviving, it is dubiously said, almost till the 
period of the Restoration, talked, when an old 
man, of the poet's impersonation of Adam, in 
"As You Like It." (Possibly the reference of 
that legend is. correctly, not to Gilbert, but to a 
son of his, for Gilbert would have been nearly a 
century old when Kins Charles the Second 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 181 

came to the throne.) Here, likewise, is shown 
a gold seal ring, which was found, many years 
ago, in a field near Stratford church, and 
on which, delicately engraved, appear the let- 
ters W. S., entwined with a true-lovers' knot. 
It may have belonged to Shakespeare. The 
local conjecture is that it did, and it has also 
been conjectured that, since on the last of the 
three sheets which contain his Will the word 
"seal" is stricken out and the word "hand" 
substituted, he did not seal that document 
because he had only just lost the ring. The 
supposition is ingenious, and the enthusiast 
will not be harmed by acceptance of it: nor, 
as he contemplates the ancient, decrepit school- 
desk, taken from the Grammar- School in 
Church Street and placed in this museum, 
will it greatly tax his credulity to believe that 
the "shining morning face" of the boy Shake- 
speare once looked down upon it, in the irk- 
some quest of his "small Latin and less Greek." 
They call it "Shakespeare's desk." It is old, 
and it is known to have been in the school of 
the guild more than three hundred years ago. 



182 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

There are other relies, more or less indirectly 
connected with the great name that is here 
commemorated. The inspection of them all 
would consume many days; the description 
of them would occupy many pages. Von write 
your name in the visitors' hook, at parting, and 
perhaps stroll forth into the garden of the 
cottage, which encloses it at the sides and in 
the rear, and there, beneath the leafy boughs 
of the English lime, behold growing around 
you the rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, 
rue, daisies, and violets, which make Ophelias 
imperishable garland and which are the fra- 
grance of her lovely memory. 

Thousands of times the wonder must have 
been expressed that while the world knows so 
much about Shakespeare's mind it should lack 
ample details of his life. The date of his birth, 
even, is established by inference. The register 
of Stratford church shows that he was bap- 
tized there in 1504, on April 20. It was cus- 
tomary to baptize infants on the third day 
after their birth. It is presumed that the cus- 
tom was followed in this instance, and hence 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 183 

it is inferred that Shakespeare was born on 
April 23, — a date which, making allowance 
for the difference between the old and new 
styles of reckoning time, corresponds to our 
May 3. Equally by an inference it is estab- 
lished that the boy was educated in the free 
Grammar-School. The school was there, and 
any boy of the town, who was seven years 
old and able to read, could obtain admission 
to it. Shakespeare's father, an alderman of 
Stratford (he was elected chief alderman, 
October 10, 1571), and then a man of com- 
petent fortune, though afterward he became 
poor, would have wished that his children 
should grow up in knowledge. To the ancient 
school-house, accordingly, and the adjacent 
chapel of the guild, — which are still extant, 
at the south-east corner of Chapel Lane and 
Church Street, — the pilgrim confidingly traces 
the footsteps of the poet. The chapel was 
built about the middle of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. It was a Roman Catholic institution, 
founded in 1296, under the patronage of the 
Bishop of Worcester, and committed to the 



184 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

pious custody of the guild of Stratford. A 
hospital was connected with it, in those days, 
and Robert de Stratford was its first master. 
Confirmation and new privileges were granted 
to the guild by King Henry the Sixth, in 1403 
and 1420. The Cranmiar-School. established 
on an endowment of lands and tenements by 
Thomas Jolyffe, was set up, in association with 
it, in 1482. Toward the end of the reign of 
King Henry the Seventh the whole of the 
chapel, excepting the chancel, was torn down 
and rebuilt, under the munificent direction of 
Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, 
Stratford's chief citizen and benefactor. Under 
King Henry the Eighth, when came the stormy 
Reformation, the priests were driven out, the 
guild was dissolved, and the chapel was 
despoiled. King Edward the Sixth, however, 
granted a new charter to it, and, with espe- 
cial precautions, reinstated the school. The 
chapel was occasionally used as a schoolroom 
when Shakespeare was a boy, and until as late 
as the year 1593, and in case the lad did go 
thither, in 1571, as a pupil, he must have 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 185 

been, from childhood, familiar with the series 
of grotesque pictures upon its walls, present- 
ing the history of the Holy Cross, from its 
origin as a tree, at the beginning of the world, 
to its exaltation at Jerusalem. Those paintings 
were brought to light in 1804, in the course of 
a renovation of the chapel which then occurred, 
when the walls were relieved of a thick coat- 
ing of whitewash, laid on them long before, in 
Puritan times, either to spoil or to hide from 
the spoiler. The pictures are not visible now, 
but they were copied and have been engraved. 
The drawings of them, by Fisher, are in the 
collection of Shakespearean Rarities made by 
Halliwell-Phillipps. This chapel and its con- 
tents constitute one of the few remaining spec- 
tacles at Stratford that bring the observer face 
to face with Shakespeare. It is believed that 
during the closing years of his life the poet 
dwelt almost continually in his house of New 
Place, immediately opposite to this church. 
The configuration of the excavated foundations 
of that house indicates what would now be 
called a deep bay-window in its southern front. 



186 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

There, probably, was Shakespeare's study, and 
through that casement, many and many a time, 
in storm and in sunshine, by night and by day, 
he must have looked upon the grim, square 
tower, the embattled stone wall, and the four 
tall Gothic windows of that impressive building, 
already in his time made picturesque by age. 
New Place, Shakespeare's home, in which he 
died, stood on the north-east corner of Chapel 
Street and Chapel Lane. Nothing now remains 
of it but a portion of its foundations, — long 
buried in the earth, but found and exhumed in 
comparatively recent days. There is no authen- 
tic picture in existence that shows New Place 
as it was when Shakespeare lived in it, but 
there is a sketch of it as it appeared in 1740. 
The house was built by Sir Hugh Clopton, 
nearly a century before it became, by pur- 
chase, the property of the poet, and it had 
borne the name of New Place before it came 
into his possession. The Clopton family 
parted with it in 1563, and it was subse- 
quently owned by families named Bott and 
Underhill. At Shakespeare's death it was 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 187 

inherited by his eldest daughter, Susanna, wife 
of Dr. John Hall. In 1643, Mrs. Hall, then 
seven years a widow, being still its owner and 
occupant, Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King 
Charles the First, who had come to Stratford, 
with a part of the royal army, resided for three 
days at New Place, which, therefore, must, even 
then, have been the most considerable private 
residence in the town. (The Queen arrived at 
Stratford on July 11, and on July 13 she 
went to Kineton.) Mrs. Hall, dying in 1649, 
aged sixty-six, left it to her only child, Eliza- 
beth, then Mrs. Thomas Nashe, who ultimately, 
having been left a widow, wedded with Sir John 
Barnard, of Abingdon, and removed to that 
town. After her death the estate was purchased, 
1675, by Sir Edward Walker, who bequeathed 
it to his daughter's husband, Sir John Clop- 
ton (1638-1719), and so it once more passed 
into the hands of the family of its founder. A 
second Sir Hugh Clopton (1671-1751) owned 
it at the middle of the eighteenth century, and 
under his direction it was repaired, decorated, 
and furnished with a new front. That proved 



188 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the beginning of the end of the old structure, 
as a relic of Shakespeare, for that owner, dying 
in 1751, bequeathed it to his son-in-law, Henry 
Talbot, who, in 1753, sold it to the Rev. Francis 
Gastrell, vicar of Frodsham, Cheshire, by whom 
it was destroyed. 

Mr. Gastrell was a man of fortune, and he 
seems, likewise, to have been a man of singu- 
lar insensibility. He knew little of Shakespeare, 
but he knew that the frequent incursion, into 
his garden, of strangers who came to sit 
beneath "Shakespeare's mulberry" was a dis- 
tinct annoyance. He, therefore, struck at the 
root of the vexation and, in 1756, cut down 
the tree. The wood was purchased by Thomas 
Sharp, a watchmaker of Stratford, who sub- 
sequently made a solemn declaration that he 
carried it to his home and converted it into 
toys and kindred memorial relics. The vil- 
lagers of Stratford, meantime, incensed at 
the conduct of Mr. Gastrell, which they 
deemed barbarous, took their revenge by 
breaking his windows. In that and in other 
ways the clergyman was made to realize his 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 189 

local unpopularity. It had been his custom 
to reside in Lichfield during a part of each 
year, leaving servants in charge of New Place. 
The overseers of Stratford, having lawful 
authority to levy a tax, for the maintenance 
of the poor, on every house in the town valued 
at more than forty shillings a year, did not 
neglect to make use of their power, in the 
case of Mr. Gastrell. The result of their 
exactions in the sacred cause of charity was 
decisive. In 1759 Mr. Gastrell declared that 
the house should never be taxed again, pulled 
down the building, sold the materials of which 
it had been composed, and left Stratford for- 
ever. 

In the house adjacent to the site of what 
was once Shakespeare's home there is a museum 
of Shakespearean relics. Among them is a 
stone mullion, found on the site, which is 
believed to have surmounted a window of the 
original mansion. This estate, bought from 
different owners and restored to its Shake- 
spearean condition, became, on April 17, 1876, 
the property of the corporation of Stratford. 



190 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

The tract of land is not large. The visitor 

can traverse the whole of it in a few minutes, 
although, if he obey his inclination, he will 
linger there for hours. The enclosure is an 
irregular rectangle, about two hundred feet 
long. The scion o( the Shakespeare mulberry 
is extant ami tenacious, wearing its honors in 
contented vigor. Other trees give grateful 
shade to the grounds, while the voluptuous red 
roses, growing around, in rich profusion, fill 
the air with fragrance. Eastward, at a little 
distance, flows the Avon. Not far away rises 
the graceful spire of the Holy Trinity. A 
few rooks, hovering in the air and bent on 
some facetious mischief, send down through 
the silver haze of the summer morning their 
sagacious yet melancholy caw. The windows 
oi' the gray chapel across the street glimmer 
and keep their solemn secret. On this spot 
was first waved the mystic wand o^ Prospero, 
Here Ariel sang of dead men's bones turned 
into pearl and coral in the deep caverns of the 
sea. Here arose into everlasting life Ilcrmionc, 
"as tender as infancy and grace." Here were 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 191 

created Miranda and Pcrdita, twins of heaven's 
radiant goodness, — 

Daffodil* 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty; violeta dim, 
But sweeter than Uj<- lid* of Juno's eyes 
Or Cytherea'f breath. 

To speculate upon the personal experience of 
Shakespeare, — when, as his somewhat mysteri- 
ous sonnets seem to denote, his great heart had 
felt the devastating blast of cruel passions, — 
would he merely to wander in the maze of fruit- 
less conjecture. Happily, to the stroller in 
Stratford, every association connected with him 
is gentle and sweet. His image, as it rises there, 
is of smiling boyhood or sedate and benignant 
maturity; always either joyous or serene, 
never passionate, or turbulent, or dark. The 
pilgrim thinks of him as a happy child 
at his father's fireside; as a wondering school- 
boy, ill the quiet, venerable close of the 
old guild chapel, where the only sound that 
breaks the silence is the chirp of birds or the 



192 SHAKESPExVRES ENGLAND 

creaking of the church vane; as a handsome, 
dauntless youth, sporting by his beloved river 
or roaming through field and forest many miles 
around; as the bold, adventurous spirit, bent 
on frolic and mischief, and not averse to 
danger, leading, perhaps, the wild lads of his 
village in their poaching depredations on the 
chace of Charlecote; as the lover, strolling 
through the green lanes of Shottery, hand in 
hand with the darling of his first love, while 
round them the honeysuckle breathed out its 
fragrant heart upon the winds of night, and 
overhead the moonlight, streaming through 
rifts of elm and poplar, fell on their path- 
way in showers of shimmering silver; and, 
last of all, as the illustrious poet, rooted and 
secure in his massive and shining fame, loved 
by many, and venerated and mourned by all, 
borne slowly through Stratford churchyard, 
while the golden bells were tolled in sorrow 
and the mourning lime-trees dropped their 
blossoms on his bier, to the place of his ever- 
lasting rest. 

Through all the scenes incidental to that 




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HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 193 

experience the worshipper of Shakespeare's 
genius can follow him every step of the way. 
The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery 
remains accessible. Wild-flowers are bloom- 
ing along its margin, and the gardens and 
meadows through which it winds are sprinkled 
with the gorgeous scarlet of the poppy. The 
hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile westward 
from Stratford, and there, nestled beneath the 
elms, and almost embowered in vines and roses, 
stands the cottage of Anne Hathaway. This 
is more antiquated in appearance than the 
birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously 
a relic of the distant past. It is built of wood 
and plaster, ribbed with massive timbers, and 
covered with a thatch roof. It fronts south- 
ward, presenting its eastern end to the road. 
Under the eaves, peeping through embrasures 
cut in the thatch, are four tiny casements, round 
which the ivy twines and the roses wave softly 
in the summer wind. The western end of the 
structure is higher than the eastern. In front 
is a straggling garden. There is a comfortable 
air of wildness, yet not of neglect, in its 



194 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

appointments and surroundings. Entering its 
parlor you see the stone floor, a wide fire-place, 
a broad, hospitable hearth, with eosey chimney- 
corners, and near this an old wooden settle, 
much decayed but still serviceable, on which 
Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at 
liis side. The plaster walls of this room here 
and there reveal portions of an oak wainscot. 
The ceiling is low. This, evidently, was the 
farm-house of a substantial yeoman, in the 
days of King Henry the Eighth. The Hath- 
aways had lived in Shottery for forty years 
prior to Shakespeare's marriage. The poet 
had just turned eighteen, while his bride was 
nearly twenty-six. They were married in 
November, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, 
came in the following May. It is not known 
where the poet and his wife lived during the 
first years after their marriage. Perhaps in the 
cottage at Shottery; perhaps with Hamnet and 
Judith Sadler, for whom their twins, born in 
1585, were named Hamnet and Judith. The 
parental home, naturally, would have been 
chosen for xVnne's refuge, when presently, in 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 195 

1585-'86, Shakespeare was obliged to leave 
his wife and children, and go to London, to 
seek his fortune. It was in Stratford that 
his son Hamnet died, in 1596. Anne and 
her children, probably, had never left the town. 
The garret of the Shottery cottage may often 
have welcomed the poet when he came home 
from his labors in the great city. It is a 
homely, humble place, but the sight of it makes 
the heart thrill with inexpressible emotion. 
You cannot wish to speak when you are stand- 
ing there. You are scarcely conscious of the 
low rustling of the leaves outside, the far-off 
sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint 
fragrance of woodbine and maiden's-blush 
that is wafted in at the open casement and 
that swathes in Nature's incense a memory 
sweeter than itself. 

Associations can be established by fable as 
well as by fact. There is little or no reason 
to believe the legendary tale, first recorded by 
Rowe, that Shakespeare, having robbed the 
deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote 
(there was no park at Charlecote then, but 



196 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

there was one at Fullbrooke), was so severely 
prosecuted by that magistrate that he was com- 
pelled to quit Stratford and shelter himself 
in London; yet the story has twisted itself 
into all the lives of Shakespeare, and, whether 
received or rejected, has clung to the house 
of Charlecote. That noble mansion, a genuine 
specimen, despite a few modern alterations, of 
the architecture of Queen Elizabeth's time, 
stands in a park, on the west bank of the 
Avon, about three miles north-east from Strat- 
ford. It is a long, rambling, three-storied 
palace, as quaint as old St. James's in Lon- 
don, and not altogether unlike that edifice in 
general character, with octagon turrets, gables, 
balustrades, Tudor casements, and great stacks 
of chimneys, and is so nearly hidden by elms of 
giant growth that you can scarce distinguish 
it through the foliage till you are close upon 
it. It was erected in 1558, by Sir Thomas Lucy, 
who, in 1578, was Sheriff of Warwickshire, 
who was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 
and 1584, and who was knighted by Queen 
Elizabeth, in 1565. The porch to this build- 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 197 

ing was designed by John of Padua. There 
is a silly ballad in existence, idly attributed 
to Shakespeare, which, it is said, was found 
affixed to Lucy's gate, and which gave that 
knight great offence. He must have been 
more than commonly sensitive to low abuse if 
he could have been annoyed by such a scur- 
rilous ebullition of the manifest blackguard 
and blockhead, — supposing, indeed, that he 
ever saw it. That ballad, proffered as the 
work of Shakespeare, is a forgery. There is 
but one known reason to believe that the poet 
ever cherished a grudge against the Lucy 
family, — namely, the coarse allusion to the 
"luces" which is found in the "Merry Wives 
of Windsor." 

There was, apparently, a second Sir Thomas 
Lucy, of later date than the Sheriff, who was 
more of the Puritanic breed, while Shakespeare, 
seemingly, was a Cavalier. It is possible that, 
in a youthful frolic, the poet may have 
poached on Sheriff Lucy's preserves. Even so, 
the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that, 
in after years, he may have had reason to dis- 



198 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

like his ultra-Puritanical neighbor. Some mem- 
ory of the tradition will haunt the traveller's 
thoughts as he strolls by Hatton Rock and 
through the villages of Hampton and Charle- 
cote. Rut this discordant recollection is soon 
smoothed away by the peaceful loveliness of 
the ramble, — past aged hawthorns that Shake- 
speare may have seen, and under the boughs 
of beeches, limes, and drooping willows, where 
every footstep falls on wild-flowers, or on a 
cool green turf that is soft as silk and as 
firm as the sand of the sea-beaten shore. 
Thought of Sheriff Lucy will not be other- 
wise than kind, either, when the stranger in 
Charlecote church reads the epitaph with which 
the knight commemorated his wife: 

All the time of her Lyfe a true and faithfull servant 
of her good God ; never detected of any crime or vice ; 
in religion most sound; in love to her husband most 
faithfull and true. In friendship most constant. To 
what in trust was committed to her most secret; in 
wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bring- 
ing up of Youth in the feare of God that did con- 
verse with her most rare and singular; a great main- 
tainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 199 

misliked of none unless the envious. When all is spoken 
that can be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished 
with Virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be 
equalled of any; as she lived most virtuously, so she 
dyed most godly. Set down by him that best did know 
what hath been written to be true. Thomas Lucy. 

A narrow formalist that county squire may 
have been, and, as a magistrate, severe in his 
dealings with scapegrace youths, and perhaps 
a haughty, disagreeable neighbor, but there is 
a tone of manhood, high feeling, and virtu- 
ous, self-respecting character in those lines that 
wins the response of sympathy. If Shakespeare 
shot the deer of Sir Thomas Lucy he com- 
mitted an offence and received a legal penalty. 
Shakespeare, boy or man, was not a saint, and 
those who so account him can have read his 
works to little purpose. He can bear the full 
brunt of his fault. He does not need to be 
canonized. 

The ramble to Charlecote, — one of the pret- 
tiest walks about Stratford, — was, it may 
safely be supposed, often taken by Shakespeare. 
Many another ramble was possible to him and 



200 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

no doubt was made. He would cross the mill 
bridge, new in 1599, which spans the Avon, 
a little way south of the church. A quaint, 
sleepy mill no doubt it was, flecked with moss 
and ivy, and the gaze of Shakespeare assur- 
edly dwelt on it with pleasure. His foot- 
steps can be traced, also, in fancy, to the 
region of the old College building, demol- 
ished in 1799, which stood in the southern part 
of Stratford, and was the home of his friend 
John Combe, factor of Fulke Greville, Earl 
of Warwick. Still another of his walks must 
have tended northward, through Welcombe, 
where he was the owner of land, to the portly 
manor of Clopton, or to the home of William, 
nephew of John-a-Combe, which stood where 
the Phillips mansion stands now. On what is, 
locally, called the "Ancient House," which 
stands on the west side of High Street, he 
may often have looked, as he strolled past it, 
to the Red Horse. That picturesque build- 
ing, dated 1596, survives, a beautiful specimen 
of Tudor architecture, in one at least of its 
most charming traits, the carved and timber- 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 201 

crossed gable. It is a house of three stories, 
containing parlor, sitting-room, kitchen, and 
several bedrooms, besides cellars and brew- 
shed. In that house, according to a dubious 
tradition, was born the mother of John Har- 
vard, who founded Harvard University. This, 
a genuine piece of antiquity, vies with the Gram- 
mar- School and the hall of the guild, under 
the pent-house of which the poet would pass, 
whenever he went abroad from New Place. 
Julius Shaw, one of the five witnesses to his 
Will, lived in the house next to the present 
New Place Museum, and there, it is reasonable 
to think, Shakespeare would often pause, for a 
word with his friend and neighbor. In the 
little streets by the river-side, which are redolent 
of the past, his image seems steadily familiar. 
In Dead Lane, once called Walker Street, 
now called Chapel Lane, he owned a cottage, 
bought of Walter Getley in 1602, and only 
destroyed within the nineteenth century. Those 
and kindred shreds of fact, suggesting the 
poet as a living man and connecting him, how- 
ever vaguely, with our everyday experience, 



202 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

are seized with peculiar zest by the pilgrim 
in Stratford. 

Such a votary, for example, never doubts 
that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in leisure 
or convivial hours, of the ancient Red Horse 
Inn, now an hotel. It stood there, in his 
day, as it stands now, on the north side of 
Bridge Street, westward from the Avon. 
There are many other taverns in the town, — 
the Shakespeare, a cosey resort, the Falcon, the 
Rose and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the 
Swan's Nest, being a few of them, — but the 
Red Horse takes precedence of all its kin- 
dred, in the fascinating, because suggestive, 
attribute of antiquity. Moreover it was the 
Red Horse that harbored Washington Irving, 
the pioneer of American worshippers at the 
shrine of Shakespeare, and the American 
explorer of Stratford would cruelly sacrifice 
his peace of mind if he were to repose under 
any other roof. The Red Horse is a ram- 
bling, three-story building, entered through 
an archway that leads into a long, sloping 
yard, adjacent to offices and stables. On one 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 203 

side of the entrance is found the smoking- 
room; on the other is the coffee-room. Above 
are the bedrooms. It is an old-fashioned 
house, — such a one as untravelled Americans 
only know in the pages of Dickens. The 
rooms are furnished in neat, homelike style, 
and their associations deck them with the fra- 
grant garlands of memory. When Drayton 
and Jonson came down to Stratford to 
visit their comrade Shakespeare, they could 
not have omitted to quaff the humming ale 
of Warwickshire in the snug parlor of the 
Red Horse. When Queen Henrietta Maria 
was ensconced at New Place, the general of 
the royal forces quartered himself at the Red 
Horse, and then, doubtless, there was revelry, 
enough and to spare, within its walls. A little 
later the old house was soundly peppered by 
Roundhead bullets, for the town was over- 
run by the soldiers of the Parliament, war- 
ring against the Crown. In 1742 Garrick 
and Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and 
thither again came Garrick, in 1769, to direct 
the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then dis- 



204 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

mally accomplished, but which is remembered 
to the great actor's credit and honor. Better- 
ton, no doubt, lodged there when he came 
to the town in quest of reminiscences of 
Shakespeare. The visit of Washington Irving, 
supplemented with his pleasing chronicle, has 
caused a sort of consecration of the parlor in 
which he sat, and the chamber, room No. 15, 
in which he slept. They still keep the poker, — 
now marked "Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre," — 
with which, as he sat there, in long, ecstatic 
meditation, he prodded the fire in the narrow, 
tiny grate, and also they treasure the chair in 
which he sat. Thus genius can sanctify the 
humblest objects. 

To pass rapidly in review that which is 
known of Shakespeare's life is, nevertheless, to 
be impressed not only by its incessant and 
amazing literary fertility, but by the quick 
succession of its salient incidents. The vitality 
must have been enormous that created, in so 
short a time, such a number and variety of 
works of the highest order. The same "quick 
spirit" would naturally have kept in agita- 




f <i- r 












HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 205 

lion all the elements of his daily experience. 
Descended from an ancestor who had fought 
for the Red Rose on Bosworth Field, he was 
born to good repute as well as competence, 
and, during his early childhood, he received 
instruction and training in a comfortable home. 
There is reason to believe that he went to school 
when seven years old and left it when about 
fourteen, his once prosperous father having 
fallen into misfortune. It is conjectured that 
he saw the Players who from time to time 
acted in the Guildhall, under the auspices of 
the corporation of Stratford; that he attended 
the religious entertainments which were cus- 
tomarily given in the city of Coventry; and 
that, in particular, he witnessed the elaborate, 
sumptuous pageants with which, in 1575, the 
Earl of Leicester welcomed Queen Elizabeth 
to Kenil worth Castle. He married at eighteen, 
and, leaving a wife and three children, two 
of them twins, in Stratford, he went to Lon- 
don at the age of twenty-one. His entrance 
into theatrical life followed, — in what capacity 
it is impossible to say. At twenty-eight he 



206 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

was known as an author, and his enemy, 
Greene, had disparaged him, in the "Groat's- 
worth of Wit." At thirty he had acted with 
Burbage and Kemp, before Queen Elizabeth. 
At thirty-three he had acquired wealth enough 
to purchase New Place, where, doubtless, he 
placed his family and established his home, — 
himself remaining in London, but visiting 
Stratford at frequent intervals. At thirty- 
four he was the actor of Knoxvcll, in Ben 
Jonson's comedy of "Every Man in His 
Humor." (Jonson's admired comedy was first 
acted in 1598, "by the then Lord Chamberlain 
liis servants." Knoxvcll is designated as "an 
old gentleman." The Jonson Folio of 1692 
names as follows the principal comedians who 
acted in that piece: "Will. Shakespeare. Aug. 
Philips. Hen. Condel. Will Slye. Will Kempe. 
Ric. Burbage. Joh. Hemings. Tho. Pope. 
Chr. Beston. Joh. Duke.") At thirty-four also 
he received the glowing encomium of Meres, 
in "Wit's Treasury." At thirty-eight he had 
written "Hamlet " and "As You Like it," and 
he had become the owner of more estate in 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 207 

Stratford, costing £320. At forty-one he made 
liis largest purchase, buying, for £440, the 
"unexpired term of a moiety of the interest 
in a lease, granted in 15.54, for ninety-two 
years, of the tithes of Stratford, Bishopton, 
and Welcombe." Domestie bereavements befell 
him, and worldly cares and duties were laid 
upon him, but neither grief nor business 
could check the fertility of his brain. Within 
the next ten years he wrote, among other 
great plays, "Othello," "Lear," "Macbeth," 
and "Coriolanus." At about forty-eight he 
seems to have disposed of his interest in the 
two London theatres with which he had been 
associated, the Blackfriars and the Globe, and 
to have retired to his Stratford home. That 
he was the comrade of bright spirits who glit- 
tered in "the spacious times" of Elizabeth sev- 
eral of them have left direct testimony. That 
he was the king of them all is shown in his 
works. The Sonnets have been thought to indi- 
cate that there was an afflicting episode of sinful 
passion in his life, but it is not reasonable to 
assume that a poet so essentially objective as 



208 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Shakespeare would be likely to record in his 
poetry the details of his personal experience. 
While he was in London he frequented the 
Falcon Tavern, in Southwark, and also the Mer- 
maid, and he lived at one time in St. Helen's 
parish, and at another time in Southwark. As 
an actor his name has been associated with his 
characters of Adam, Friar Lawrence, and the 
Ghost of King Hamlet, and a contemporary 
reference declared him "excellent in the quality 
he professes," — the word "quality" meaning 
profession or pursuit. He passed his last 
days at Stratford, and died there, somewhat 
suddenly, on his fifty-second birthday. That 
event occurred within thirty-three years of 
the slaughter of King Charles the First. 
The Puritan spirit, intolerant of the play- 
house, was then very potent. Shakespeare's 
daughter Susanna, aged thirty-three at the 
time of his death, survived him thirty-three 
years. His daughter Judith, aged thirty-one 
at the time of his death, survived him forty- 
six years. The whisper of tradition says that 
both of them were Puritans. If so, the seem- 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 209 

ingly unaccountable disappearance of whatever 
play-house papers he may have left at Strat- 
ford should not be deemed singular. This 
suggestion must have been made before, and 
also it must have been supplemented with a 
reference to the great fire in London, 1666 
(which, in consuming old St. Paul's Cathedral, 
burned a vast quantity of books and manu- 
scripts that had been brought from all the 
threatened parts of the city and heaped beneath 
its arches for safety), as, probably, the holo- 
caust of almost every piece of print or writing 
that might have served to illumine dark places 
in the story of Shakespeare. In his person- 
ality no less than in the fathomless resources 
of his genius he baffles scrutiny and stands 
alone. 

It is impossible to convey an adequate sug- 
gestion of the overwhelming sense of peace 
that falls upon the soul of the pilgrim when 
in Stratford church. All the cares, struggles, 
and trials of mortal life, all its failures, and 
equally all its acliievements, seem there to pass 
utterly out of remembrance. It is not now an 



210 SHAKESPEARE S ENGLAND 

idle reflection that "the paths of glory lead but 
to the grave." No power of human thought 
ever rose higher or went further than the 
thought of Shakespeare. No human being, 
using the best weapons of intellectual achieve- 
ment, ever accomplished more. Yet here 
he lies, who was once so great! And here 
also, gathered around him in death, lie his 
parents, his children, his descendants, and his 
friends. For him and for them the struggle 
has long since ended. Let no man fear to 
tread the dark pathway that Shakespeare has 
trodden before him. Let no man, standing at 
this grave, and seeing and feeling that all 
the splendid labors of vast genius end here 
in a handful of dust, fret and grieve any 
more over the puny, evanescent toils of to-day, 
so soon to be buried in oblivion! In the sim- 
ple performance of duty and in the life of 
the affections there may be permanence and 
solace. The rest is an "insubstantial pageant." 
It breaks, it changes, it dies, it passes away, it 
is forgotten; and though a great name be now 
and then for a little while remembered, what 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 211 

can the remembrance of mankind signify to 
him who once bore it? Shakespeare, there is 
reason to believe, placed precisely the right 
value alike upon renown in his time and the 
homage of posterity. Though he went forth, 
as the stormy impulses of his nature drove 
him, into the great world of London, and there 
laid the firm hand of conquest upon the spoils 
of wealth and power, he came back at last to 
the peaceful home of his childhood; he strove 
to garner the comforts and treasures of love 
at his hearth-stone; he sought an enduring 
place in the hearts of friends and companions; 
and so he won for his stately sepulchre the 
garland not alone of glory but of affection. 
Through the high eastern window of the 
chancel of Holy Trinity Church the morning 
sunshine, broken into many-colored light, 
streams in upon the grave of Shakespeare and 
gilds his bust upon the wall above it. The line 
of graves beginning at the north wall of the 
chancel and extending across to the south is 
devoted entirely to Shakespeare and his family, 
with one exception. The pavement is of that 



212 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

blue-gray slate or freestone which, in England, 
is sometimes called "black marble." In the first 
grave close to the north wall rests Shakespeare's 
wife. The next is that of the poet, bearing the 
well-known words of entreaty and imprecation. 
Next is the grave of Thomas Nashe, husband 
of Elizabeth Hall, the poet's granddaughter, 
who died April 4, 1647. Next is that of Dr. 
John Hall, who died November 25, 1635, hus- 
band of his daughter Susanna, and beside him 
rests Susanna, who was buried on July 11, 
1649. The gravestones are laid east and west, 
and all but one are inscribed: the uninscribed 
one is next to the south wall, and, possibly, 
it covers the dust of Judith, — Mrs. Thomas 
Quiney, — the youngest daughter of Shake- 
speare, who surviving her three children and 
leaving no descendants, died in 1662. Upon 
the gravestone of Susanna an inscription has 
been placed, commemorative of Richard 
Watts, a person not known to have had any 
relationship with either Shakespeare or his 
descendants. Shakespeare's father, who died 
in 1601, and his mother, Mary Arden, who 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 213 

died in 1608, were buried somewhere in this 
church. (The register says, under Burials, 
"September 9, 1608, Mayry Shaxspere, wyd- 
owe.") His infant sisters Joan, Margaret, 
and Anne, and his brother Richard, who died, 
aged thirty-nine, in 1613, were also laid to rest 
in this place. His sister Joan, the second, — 
Mrs. Hart, — would, naturally, have been placed 
with her relatives. His brother Edmund, dying 
in 1607, aged twenty-seven, was laid beneath 
the pavement of St. Saviour's Church, in South- 
ward The boy Hamnet, dying before his 
father had become eminent, rests in an undis- 
tinguished grave in the churchyard. The 
Registers of Stratford, which have been care- 
fully edited by that thorough, conscientious 
antiquarian and scholar, Richard Savage, record 
his burial on August 11, 1596. The family of 
Shakespeare seems to have been short-lived, and 
it was soon extinguished. He died at fifty-two. 
Judith's children perished young. Susanna 
bore only one child, Elizabeth, who became, 
successively, Mrs. Nashe and Lady Barnard, 
and she, dying in 1670, was buried at Abingdon, 



214 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

near Oxford. She left no children by either 
husband, and in her the race of Shakespeare 
became extinct. Thus, one by one, from the 
pleasant, rustic town of Stratford, they went 
to take up their long abode in that old church, 
which was ancient even in their infancy, and 
which, watching through the centuries, in its 
monastic solitude on the shore of Avon, has 
seen their lands and houses devastated by flood 
and fire, the places that knew them changed 
by the tooth of time, and almost all the asso- 
ciations of their lives obliterated by the improv- 
ing hand of destruction. 

One of the oldest Shakespearean documents 
in existence is a narrative, by a traveller named 
Dowdall, of his observations in Warwickshire, 
and of his visit, in April, 1693, to Stratford 
church. He describes therein the bust and the 
tombstone of Shakespeare, and he adds these 
instructive words: "The clerk that showed me 
this church was above eighty years old. He 
says that . . . not one, for fear of the curse 
above said, dare touch his gravestone, though 
his wife and daughter did earnestly desire to 



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HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 215 

be laid in the same grave with him." Writers 
in modern days have disparaged that inscrip- 
tion and conjectured that it was the work of 
a sexton and not of the poet, but no one 
denies that it has accomplished its purpose, 
in preserving the sanctity of Shakespeare's 
rest. Its rugged form, its pathos, its fitness, 
and its sincerity make it felt as unquestion- 
ably the utterance of Shakespeare, when it is 
read upon the slab that covers him. There the 
musing traveller full well conceives how dearly 
the poet must have loved the beautiful scenes 
of his birthplace, and with what intense long- 
ing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed 
in the most sacred spot in their bosom. He 
probably had a premonition of his approach- 
ing death. Three months before it came he 
made his Will. A little later he saw the mar- 
riage of his younger daughter. Within less 
than a month of his death he executed the Will, 
and thus set his affairs in order. His hand- 
writing, in the three signatures to that paper, 
conspicuously exhibits the lassitude of shat- 
tered nerves. He was, probably, quite worn 



216 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

out. Within the space, at the utmost, of 
twenty-five years, he had written thirty-seven 
known plays, one hundred and fifty-four son- 
nets, and two or more long poems; had passed 
through much and painful toil and through 
bitter sorrow; had made a fortune as author 
and actor; and had superintended, to advan- 
tage, his property in London and in Stratford 
and its neighborhood. The proclamation of 
health with which the Will begins was, prob- 
ably, a formality of legal custom. The story 
that he died of drinking too hard, at a merry 
meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson, is mere 
gossip. If in those last days of fatigue and 
presentiment he wrote the epitaph that has ever 
since marked his grave, it would naturally 
have taken the plainest fashion of speech. 
Such is its character, and no pilgrim to the 
poet's shrine could wish to see it changed: — 



Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, 
To digg the dvst encloased heare ; 
Blese be y e man y l spares thes stones 
And cvrst be he y* moves my bones. 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 217 

It has been surmised that the poet's solici- 
tude lest his bones might be disturbed in death 
grew out of his intention to take with him 
into the grave a confession that his works were 
written by another hand. Persons have been 
found who actually believe that a man who 
was great enough to write "Hamlet" could be 
little enough to feel ashamed of it, and, 
accordingly, that Shakespeare was only hired 
to play at authorship, as a screen for the actual 
author. It might not, perhaps, be strange 
that a desire for singularity, which is one of 
the worst of literary crazes, should prompt the 
rejection of the conclusive, overwhelming testi- 
mony to Shakespeare's genius that has been 
left by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that 
shines forth in all that is known of his life. It 
is strange that a doctrine should get itself 
asserted which is subversive of reason and con- 
tradictory to every known law of the human 
mind. The conjectural confession of poetic 
imposture has never been exhumed. The grave 
is known to have been disturbed in 1796, when 
alterations were made in the church, and there 



218 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

came a time when, as they were making repairs 
in the chancel pavement (the chancel was reno- 
vated in 1835), a rift was accidentally made 
in the Shakespeare vault. Through this, though 
not without misgiving, the sexton peeped in 
upon the poet's remains — and saw nothing but 
dust. 

It was the opinion of Halliwell-Phillipps 
that at one or other of those "restorations" 
the original tombstone of Shakespeare was 
removed and another one, from the yard of a 
modern stone-mason, put in its place. Dr. 
Ingleby, in his book on "Shakespeare's Bones," 
1883, asserts that the original stone was 
removed. I have compared Shakespeare's 
tombstone with that of his wife, and with 
others in the chancel, but I have not found 
the discrepancy observed by Halliwell-Phillipps, 
and I think there is no reason to believe that 
the original tombstone has ever been disturbed. 
The letters upon it were, probably, cut deeper 
in 1835. 

The antique font from which the infant 
Shakespeare may have received the water of 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 219 

Christian baptism is still preserved in the 
church. It was thrown aside and replaced by 
a new one, about the middle of the seventeenth 
century. Many years afterward it was found 
in the charnel-house. When that was destroyed, 
in 1800, it was cast into the churchyard. In 
later times the parish clerk used it as a trough 
to his pump. It passed then through the hands 
of several successive owners, till at last, in 
days that had learned to value the Past 
and the associations connected with its illus- 
trious names, it found its way back again 
to the sanctuary from which it had suf- 
fered such a rude expulsion. It is still a 
handsome stone, though broken, soiled, and 
marred. 

On the north wall of the chancel, above his 
grave and near to "the American window," 
is placed Shakespeare's monument, which is 
known to have been erected there within seven 
years after his death. It consists of a half- 
length effigy, placed beneath a fretted arch, 
with entablature and pedestal, between two 
Corinthian columns of black marble, gilded at 



220 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

base and top. Above the entablature appear 
the armorial bearings of Shakespeare, — a 
pointed spear on a bend sable, and a silver 
falcon on a tasselled helmet supporting a spear. 
Over this heraldic emblem is a death's-head, 
and on each side of it is a carved cherub, one 
holding a spade, the other an inverted torch. 
In front of the effigy is a cushion, upon which 
both hands rest, holding a scroll and a pen. 
Beneath is an inscription, in Latin and Eng- 
lish, supposed to have been furnished by the 
poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall. The bust was cut 
by Gerard Jonson, a native of Amsterdam and 
by occupation a "tombe-maker," who lived in 
Southwark, and who, probably, had seen the 
poet. The material is a soft stone, and the 
work, when first set up, was painted in the 
colors of life. Its peculiarities indicate that it 
was copied from a mask of the features, taken 
after death, and some persons believe that this 
mask has since been found: a "death mask" was 
some time ago brought out of Germany, and 
busts of Shakespeare have been based upon 
it, by W. R. O'Donovan and by William 




WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

From the Bust by Gerard Jonson, " Tombe-Maker," 
in Stratford Church. 

Great Poet! 'twas thy art 
To know thyself and in thyself to be 
Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny, 
Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart 
Can make of man. 

HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 221 

Page. In September, 1764, John Ward, 
grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, having come to 
Stratford with a theatrical company, gave a 
performance of "Othello," in the Guildhall, 
and devoted its proceeds to reparation of the 
Gerard Jonson effigy, then somewhat damaged 
by time. The original colors were then care- 
fully restored and freshened. In 1793, under 
the direction of Malone, the bust, together 
with the image of John-a-Combe, — a recum- 
bent statue upon a tomb near the east wall 
of the chancel, — was painted white. From 
that plight it was extricated, in 1861, by 
the assiduous skill of Simon Collins, who 
immersed it in a bath which took off the 
paint, and allowed a restoration of the original 
colors. The eyes are light hazel, the hair 
and pointed beard auburn, the face and hands 
flesh tint. The dress consists of a scarlet 
doublet, with a rolling collar, closely buttoned 
down the front, worn under a loose black gown 
without sleeves. The upper part of the 
cushion is green, the lower part crimson, and 
this object is ornamented with gilt tassels. 



222 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

The stone pen that formerly was in the right 
hand of the hust was taken from it, toward 
the end of the eighteenth century hy a care- 
less visitor, and heing dropped by him, upon 
the pavement, was broken. A quill pen has 
been substituted for it. This is the inscription, 
beneath the bust: — 

Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, popvlvs maret, Olympvs habet. 

Stay, passenger, why gocst tliov by so fast? 
Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plast 
Within this monvment: Shakspeare: with whome 
Qvick Natvre dide ; whose name doth deck y s tombe 
Far more than cost; sieth all y* he hath writt 
Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt. 

Obiit Ano. Do 1 . 1616. 
^Etatis 53. Die. 23. Ap. 

The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, 
monasteries, and churches of England was 
accomplished, little by little, with laborious 
toil protracted through many years. Stratford 
church, probably more than seven centuries 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 223 

old, presents a mixture of architectural styles, 
in which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace 
are beautifully mingled. Different parts of 
the structure were built at different times. It 
is fashioned in the customary crucial form, 
with a square tower, an octagon stone spire 
(erected in 1764, to replace an old one, made 
of oak and covered with lead), and a fretted 
battlement around its roof. Its windows are 
diversified, but mostly Gothic. The approach 
to it is across a churchyard thickly sown with 
graves, through a lovely green avenue of lime- 
trees, leading to a porch on its north side. 
This avenue of limes is said to be the copy 
of one that existed there in Shakespeare's day, 
through which he must often have walked, 
and through which at last he was carried to 
his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep in this 
ancient place. The low sob of the organ only 
deepens the awful sense of its silence and its 
dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the 
churchyard, and many a low tomb and many 
a leaning stone are there, in the shadow, gray 
with moss and mouldering with age. Birds 



224 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

have built their nests in many crevices in the 
timeworn tower, round which at sunset you 
can see them circle, with chirp of greeting or 
with croak of discontent. Near by flows the 
peaceful river, reflecting the gray spire in its 
dark, silent, shining waters. In the long and 
lonesome meadows beyond it the primroses 
stand, in their golden ranks among the clover, 
and the frilled and fluted bell of the cow- 
slip, hiding the single drop of blood in its 
bosom, closes its petals as the night comes 
down. 

Northward, at a little distance from the 
Church of the Holy Trinity, stands, on the 
-west bank of the Avon, the Shakespeare Memo- 
rial. The plan of a Memorial was suggested 
in 18G4, incidentally to the ceremonies wliich 
then commemorated the three-hundredth anni- 
versary of the poet's birth. Ten years later 
the site for this structure was presented to 
the town by Charles Edward Flower, one of 
its most honored inhabitants — since deceased. 
Contributions of money were then asked, and 
were given. Americans as well as English- 



HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 225 

men contributed. On April 23, 1877, the first 
stone of the Memorial was laid. On April 
23, 1880, the building was dedicated. The 
fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a 
picture-gallery. In the library and picture- 
gallery are assembled books about Shakespeare, 
and paintings that illustrate his life and his 
works. As the years pass this will, more and 
more, become a principal depository of Shake- 
spearean objects. The gardens that sur- 
round the Memorial will augment their loveli- 
ness in added expanse of foliage and in greater 
wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow tinge 
of age will soften the bright tints of the red 
brick that mainly composes the building. On 
its cone-shaped turrets ivy will clamber and 
moss will nestle. When a few generations 
have passed, the old town of Stratford will 
have adopted this stranger into the race of her 
venerated antiquities. The same air of poetic 
mystery that rests now upon his cottage and 
his grave will diffuse itself around his Memo- 
rial, and a remote posterity, looking back to 
the men and the ideas of to-day, will remember 



226 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

with grateful pride that the English-speaking 
people of the nineteenth century, although they 
could confer no honor upon the great name 
of Shakespeare, yet honored themselves by con- 
secrating this votive temple to his memory. 

SHAKESPEARE. 

Still flows, rejoicing in one hallowed name, 

The golden tide of reverence and acclaim; 

Still, through long years, the lowly and the great 

Around his shrine and in his temple wait. 

And sure no holier impulse can impart 

Exalted gladness to the reverent heart 

Than this, which prompts its homage to one soul 

That measur'd, sounded, and express'd the whole. 



XV. 

A GLIMPSE OF TEWKESBURY. 

In the sunset glow of a June day I rested 
at the Hop-Pole in Tewkesbury, and saw, for 
the first time, the noble Abbey which is at once 
the glory of that ancient town and one of the 
grandest relics of feudal England. A vast, 
grim tower, flecked with dusky orange tints 
and gray with age, rears its majestic head 
above a cluster of red-brick dwellings, in a 
wide, green plain at the confluence of the Avon 
and the Severn, and, visible for many miles 
around, announces, with silent but moving 
eloquence, one of the most storied of English 
historic shrines. Old Tewkesbury, although 
not a very active town, is distinctly an emblem 
of to-day; and yet, amid all its romantic asso- 
ciations, its life of the passing hour seems to 
surge and break as at the base of monumental 

227 



228 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

ages, long gone and half forgotten. Various 
antique buildings of the town have been 
restored, and several timbered fronts of rare 
beauty diversify, among its habitations, a gen- 
eral prospect of tinted stucco, red brick, and 
the staring, shutterless windows that look like 
lidless eyes. Upon those picturesque homes 
the gaze of the traveller lingers with pleas- 
ure, while fancy, brooding on their quaintness, 
readily conjures up long vistas of mediaeval 
dwellings, with, all about them, the steel-clad 
warriors of Lancaster and of York, in days 
when the Wars of the Roses were steeping 
England in blood and grief. Tewkesbury in 
its general aspect is modern, and yet it is 
backward to the stormy period of those bitter 
wars that it carries the pilgrim's thought. 
The Abbey is more than the town, and the 
distant past is more than the present. Dedi- 
cated in 1123, that Abbey was an old church 
(for it had already stood there during three 
centuries and a half), when the fierce battle 
between the armies of King Edward the 
Fourth and Queen Margaret raged around it, 



TEWKESBURY 229 

and the house of Lancaster, in 1471, suffered 
such a crushing defeat. Yet it appears now 
much as, probably, it appeared then. Build- 
ings, it is true, press closely upon every side 
of it and somewhat mar, — as they do at 
Lincoln, — an effect which, otherwise, would be 
that of superlative stateliness. Not every 
Gothic giant in the realm of England is as 
fortunate as Salisbury, or Canterbury, or Win- 
chester, or, most favored of all, Durham, in 
charm of situation. Yet, in spite of a com- 
monplace environment, the Abbey of Tewkes- 
bury dominates the adjacent landscape, and 
no person who is capable of serious feeling 
can look without reverence upon that venerable 
church, there keeping its long, mysterious vigil 
among the labors, loves, sorrows, and evanescent 
nothings of an everyday world. 

A mere musing wanderer among the relics 
of Long Ago must not presume to tell their 
story. It is not needed. Yet such a wan- 
derer can be permitted to extol their grace 
and their glory, and commend them to other 
dreamers, like himself. In the little, winding 



230 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

streets of Tewkesbury there was no crowd, 
as I rambled through them at nightfall, and 
there was but little motion or other sign of 
life; and at evening service in a chapel of the 
Abbey the worshippers were so few that the 
presence of a single stranger noticeably aug- 
mented the group. It was a solemn service, 
no doubt, but I could not much heed it, for 
thinking of the ghosts that were all around me, 
and of the gray magnificence of the church. 
Columns as grand can be seen at Durham, — 
of all the cathedrals of England the most 
grim and austere, — but neither at Durham nor 
elsewhere is the view of nave and choir more 
spacious, more celestial, or more stimulative of 
reverence, and not in any temple of religion 
have been effected interments more pathetic. 
There, beneath the tower, was laid the beloved 
Prince Edward, son of King Henry the Sixth, 
of whom, on a memorial brass in the pavement, 
it is sadly said that he "was cruelly slain 
wliilst but a youth," and there, in a tomb at 
the back of the altar, in one of the most com- 
modious Lady Chapels known to exist, lies 



TEWKESBURY 231 

buried one of his reputed assassins, George, 
Duke of Clarence, Shakespeare's "false, fleet- 
ing, perjured Clarence," — himself the alleged 
victim of midnight murder in the Tower of 
London. In former days the interior of the 
tomb of Clarence was sometimes shown, and 
persons entering within it beheld the bones of 
the Duke and of his wife Isabella, daughter 
of the great Earl of Warwick, the king-maker, 
but that spectacle is no longer afforded. A 
rude drawing of the interior is, however, hung 
upon the tomb, showing the likeness of those 
relics, which are in a glazed box, affixed to the 
wall, at some height, — because in seasons when 
the Severn overflows its banks the vaults beneath 
the Abbey are occasionally inundated. Not 
distant from those royal persons rest other 
historic chieftains, the De Clares and the De- 
spensers, at various times Earls of Gloucester, 
and several of them victims of the headsman's 
axe. One notable Despenser, in particular, 
is thought to lie there, — the youthful Hugh, 
who was the friend and favorite of King 
Edward the Second, and whom Roger Morti- 



232 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

mer, predominant lover of Edward's queen, 
Isabella, caused to be dragged on a hurdle 
through the streets of Hereford (1326) and 
then barbarously hanged and quartered. Of 
Gilbert De Clare, tenth Earl of Gloucester 
and last of his house, who also lies buried at 
Tewkesbury, the traveller observes that he 
was slain at the battle of Bannockburn, and 
remembers him as a figure in Scott's poem 
of "The Lord of the Isles." 

Every foot of the Abbey is historic; and 
when at length reluctantly you leave it a few 
steps will bring you to "the field by Tewkes- 
bury," wherein the fight raged with its great- 
est fury, so that the Severn ran red with 
blood. Shakespeare, following, as he custom- 
arily did, the Tudor historians, makes that 
field the scene of the murder of Prince Edward. 
It is a peaceful place now, and when I walked 
upon it, at early morning, the sun was gilding 
its copious verdure of waving shade-trees and 
shining grass, the rooks were flying over it, 
with many a solemn caw, and the sleek cattle, 
feeding, or couched ruminant in careless groups, 




8 i=;~ 



TEWKESBURY 233 

were scattered all along its glittering, breezy 
plain. There La a tradition in Tewkesbury 
that the Lancastrian Prince of Wales was 
not murdered in the field, but in a house, 
then a palace, still extant, in the High Street, 
near the Cross, — a house now used for the 
display and sale of confectionery. Upon the 
floor of one of the rooms in that building 
blood-stains, said to be of great antiquity, are 
still visible. Such traces, indeed, the silent 
tokens of savage crime, cannot always be 
eradicated, — as the visitor can learn, by visual 
evidence, at such old houses as Clopton, near 
Stratford, and Compton-Wynyate, near Ban- 
bury, — the latter one of the most interesting 
mansions in England. It is a superstition in 
Tewkesbury that at midnight on May 7, in 
every year, — that being the anniversary of the 
Prince's assassination, — a spectral train, bear- 
ing his body, passes out of that house, to the 
solemn tolling of the Abbey bell, and vanishes. 
It is a cheerful place by daylight, with gaily 
trimmed casements, garnished counters, gleam- 
ing mirrors, and smiling girls; but, late at 



234 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

night, when the shops were closed and the town 
was still, the region around the Cross, with its 
dark, lowering, timbered fronts, its gloomy 
windows, and its dusky passages, seemed indeed 
a fit haunt for phantoms, and the tale of the 
spectral obsequies was remembered more with 
a shudder than a smile. 

There are pleasant walks about Tewkes- 
bury. The town is not large, and its chief 
streets can be explored in a few hours. Most 
of its antique buildings are private. The Bell 
Inn stands at one end of it and the Bear Inn 
at the other, — both of them timber structures, 
that date back to Plantagenet times. Near 
the Bear is an ancient bridge, across the Avon, 
— a bridge curiously indented, as the old cus- 
tom was, with triangular embrasures, in which 
the pedestrian can find refuge from horses and 
vehicles, upon the narrow roadway. Cross- 
ing that bridge, after sunset, I found a foot- 
path through the meadows, — which are very 
extensive, and upon which it is impossible to 
build, so frequently are they overflowed, — and 
presently I came to Avonmouth and saw where 



TEWKESBURY 235 

the waters of Shakespeare's river mingle with 
those of the Severn, and are carried onward 
to the all-embracing sea. The wide green fields 
were vacant, except for a silent angler here and 
there upon the river's brink. The distant town 
seemed asleep in the gloaming; the notes of a 
mellow chime floated out from the Abbey 
tower; and more near, the air was tremulous 
with the silver call of the lark. So, and of 
such antiquity and peace, that legendary city 
takes its place among the pictures that memory 
will always cherish. No traveller who rambles 
in the midlands of England, and especially no 
votary of Shakespeare, should omit the privi- 
lege of a prospect of Tewkesbury Abbey. 
Upon that scene the gaze of Shakespeare must 
have rested, and the genius of Shakespeare has 
made it immortal. 



XVI. 

LONDON ANTIQUITIES. 

Old cities inevitably grow rich in associa- 
tion, and London, by reason of great extent 
as well as great antiquity, is, perhaps, richer 
in association than any other modern place 
associated with English history. The stranger 
scarcely takes a step without encountering a 
new object of interest. The walk along the 
Strand and Fleet Street, in particular, is 
continually on storied ground. Temple Bar 
still stands (1877), though "tottering to its 
fall," and marks the junction of the two streets. 
The effigies of King Charles the First and 
King Charles the Second, on its western front, 
would be remarkable anywhere, as character- 
istic sculptures. You stand beside that arch 
and quite forget the passing throng, and take 
no heed of the tumult around, as you think of 

236 



LONDON ANTIQUITIES 237 

Dr. Johnson and his worshipper, Boswell, lean- 
ing against the Bar, after midnight, in a far- 
off time, and waking the echoes of the Temple 
with their boisterous laughter. The Bar is 
carefully propped, and they will nurse its age 
as long as they can, but it is an obstruction to 
travel, and must disappear. (It was removed 
in the summer of 1878, and set up at Theo- 
bald's Park, near Waltham.) They have left 
untouched a little piece of the original scaf- 
folding built around St. Paul's, and that frag- 
ment of weather-stained wood can be seen, 
high up on the side of the Cathedral. The 
Rainbow, the Mitre, the Cheshire Cheese, the 
Cock, and the Round Table, taverns or public- 
bouses that were frequented by the old Geor- 
gian wits, are still extant, — though doomed soon 
to perish. The Cheshire Cheese is scarcely 
changed from what it was when Johnson, 
Goldsmith, and their comrades ate beefsteak 
pie and drank porter there. The benches in 
that haunt are as uncomfortable as they well 
could be, — mere ledges of wood, on which the 
visitor sits bolt upright, in difficult perpen- 



238 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

dicular; but antiquity has its practical uses 
as well as its charm of sentiment, and those 
relics, possessing intrinsic interest, especially 
for the literary pilgrim, enhance the allure- 
ment of the place. (Several of those festive 
resorts have vanished since these words were 
first published.) 

The conservative principle of the English 
mind, if it has saved some trash, has saved 
much treasure. At the foot of Buckingham 
Street, in the Strand, — where was situated 
an estate of George Villiers, first Duke of 
Buckingham, assassinated in 1628, whose tomb 
can be seen in the chapel of King Henry the 
Seventh, in the Abbey, — still stands the slowly 
crumbling ruin of the old Water Gate, often 
mentioned as the place where, in sterner times 
than ours, accused traitors were embarked for 
the Tower. The Thames formerly flowed up 
to that gate, but the land along its margin 
has been redeemed, and the magnificent Victoria 
and Albert embankments border the shores 
of the river, for a long distance on both sides. 
The Water Gate, in fact, stands in a little 



LONDON ANTIQUITIES 239 

park, on the north bank. Not far away is 
the Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick had a 
town-house, where he died, January 20, 1779, 
aged sixty-three, and where, on October 1, 
1822, his widow expired, aged ninety-eight. 
That house is let, in "chambers," now. If you 
walk up the Strand toward Charing Cross 
you presently come to the church of St. Mar- 
tin's-in-the-Fields, — one of the works of James 
Gibbs, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and 
entirely worthy of that master's hand. The 
fogs have stained that building with such a 
deft touch as shows that the caprice of Nature 
can excel the best designs of art. Nell Gwynn's 
funeral occurred in that church, 1687, and no 
less a person than Tenison, afterward Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, preached the funeral 
sermon, — incurring a complaint, on that score, 
addressed to Queen Mary, who thereupon gen- 
tly expressed her unshaken confidence in his vir- 
tue and wisdom. That prelate's dust reposes 
in Lambeth church, which can be seen, across 
the river, from this part of Westminster. 
If you walk down the Strand, through Tern- 



240 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

pie Bar, you presently reach the Temple, and 
nowhere else in London are the past and pres- 
ent more strangely confronted. The vener- 
able church, so quaint with its cone-pointed 
turrets, was sleeping in the sunshine when 
first I saw it, sparrows were twittering around 
its spires and gliding in and out of the crevices 
in its ancient walls, while from within a strain 
of organ music, low and sweet, trembled forth, 
till the air became a benediction and every 
common thought and feeling was chastened 
away from mind and heart. The grave of 
Goldsmith is close to the pathway that skirts 
this church, on a terrace raised above the 
foundation of the building and above the little 
graveyard of the Templars, nestling at its 
base. As I stood beside the grave of that 
gentle poet it was impossible not to feel both 
grieved and glad, — grieved at the thought of 
his misfortunes; glad that time has given to 
him the reward he would most have prized, 
the affection of true hearts. A gray stone, 
coffin-shaped and marked with a cross, similar 
to the neighboring memorials of the Templars, 




TEMPLE BAR, LONDON— 1877 



High over Temple Bar 

And set in Heaven's third story, 
I look at all things as they are, 
But thought a kind of glory. 

TKXXYSOJf. 



LONDON ANTIQUITIES 241 

is imposed upon his sepulchre. One surface 
bears the inscription, "Here lies Oliver Gold- 
smith"; the other presents the dates of birth 
and death: "Born November 10, 1728; died 
April 4, 1774." I saw, in fancy, the scene of 
his burial, when, around the open grave, on 
that tearful April evening, Johnson, Burke, 
Reynolds, Beauclerc, Boswell, Davies, and the 
rest of that broken circle might have gath- 
ered (though, in fact, the mourners were few 
and undistinguished) to witness 

The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid 
And the last rites that dust to dust conveyed. 

No place could be less romantic than South- 
wark is, but there are few places that possess 
a greater charm for the literary pilgrim. 
Old London Bridge there spanned the Thames 
in those days, and was the only road to the 
Surrey side of the river. The theatre stood 
near the end of the bridge, and thus was easy 
of access from the more thickly settled part of 
London. No trace of it remains, but a public- 
house, called the Globe, which was its name, 



242 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

is near to its site, and the old church of St. 
Saviour's, — into which, probably, Shakespeare 
often entered, — still resists the encroachments 
of time and change. In Shakespeare's day 
there were houses on each side of London 
Bridge, and as he walked on the bank of the 
Thames he could look across to the Tower, 
and to Baynard Castle, which had been the 
residence of Richard, Duke of Glo'ster, and 
could see the lofty spire of old St. Paul's. 
The borough of Southwark was then thinly 
peopled. Many of its houses, as can be seen 
in an old picture of the city, were surrounded 
by fields or gardens, and the life of its inhabi- 
tants must have been comparatively rural. 
Now it is packed with buildings, gridironed 
with railroads, densely populated, and to 
the last degree resonant and feverish with 
action. Life swarms, traffic bustles, and travel 
thunders all round the cradle of the British 
Drama. The old church of St. Saviour's alone 
preserves the sanctity and stillness of the past. 
I made a pilgrimage to that shrine in the 
company of that kindly humorist, Arthur 



LONDON ANTIQUITIES 243 

Sketchley. (He died, November 13, 1882.) 
We embarked at Westminster Bridge and, 
crossing the river, landed near the church, 
and we were so fortunate as to obtain per- 
mission to enter it without a guide. The old- 
est portion is the Lady Chapel, a part of the 
sacred edifice which, in English cathedrals, 
is almost invariably placed behind the choir. 
Through this we strolled, alone and in silence. 
The pavement is a mass of tombstones, and 
through the tall, stained windows of the chapel 
a solemn light pours in upon the sculptured 
names of men and women long passed away. 
In one corner is an ancient stone coffin, a 
relic of the Roman days of Britain. This is 
the room in which Stephen Gardiner, Bishop 
of Winchester, in the cruel days of bigoted 
Queen Mary, held his ecclesiastical court, and 
doomed many a dissentient devotee to the rack 
and the fagot. Here John Rogers was con- 
demned, — to be burnt at the stake, in Smith- 
field, as shown in Fox's "Book of Martyrs." 
Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth may have 
entered this chapel. But it is in the choir 



244 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

that the pilgrim pauses with most of rever- 
ence, for there, not far from the altar, he 
stands at the graves of Edmund Shakespeare, 
John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger. They 
rest almost side by side, and only their names 
and the dates of their death are cut in the 
tablets that mark their sepulchres. Edmund 
Shakespeare, younger brother of William, and, 
like him, an actor, died in 1607, aged twenty- 
seven. The great poet must have stood at that 
grave, and so the lover of Shakespeare comes 
near to the heart of the master, when he stands 
in that place. Massinger was buried there, 
March 18, 1638, the parish register recording 
him as "a stranger." Fletcher, of the Beau- 
mont and Fletcher alliance, was buried there, 
in 1625. Beaumont's grave is in the Abbey. 
The dust of Henslowe, the manager, also rests 
beneath the pavement of St. Saviour's. Bishop 
Gardiner was buried there, with pompous cere- 
mony, in 1555. The powerful prelate Lance- 
lot Andrews, commemorated in a sonnet by 
Milton, found his grave there, in 1626. The 
royal poet, King James the First, of Scot- 



LONDON ANTIQUITIES 245 

land, was married there, in 1423, to Jane, 
daughter of the Earl of Somerset and niece 
of Cardinal Beaufort. In the south transept 
of the church is the tomb of John Gower, 
the poet, — whose carved and painted effigy 
reclines upon it. A formal, severe aspect he 
must have had, if he resembled that image. 
The tomb has been moved from the spot where 
first it stood, — a change compelled by a fire 
that destroyed part of the old church. It is 
said that Gower caused the tomb to be erected 
during his lifetime, so that it might be in readi- 
ness to receive his bones: the bones are lost, 
but the memorial remains, — sacred to the mem- 
ory of the father of English Song. The tomb 
was restored by the Duke of Sutherland, in 
1832. It is enclosed by a rail made of iron 
spears, painted brown and gilded at their 
points. I went into the new part of the church, 
and knelt in one of the pews and long remained 
there, impressed with thoughts of the past and 
of the transient, momentary nature of this our 
earthly life and the shadows that we pursue. 
One droll object attracts a passing glance 



246 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

in Southwark church, — a tomb commemorative 
of Dr. Loekyer, a maker of patent physic, in 
the time of King Charles the Second. This elab- 
orate structure presents an effigy of the doctor, 
together with a sounding epitaph, declaring 
that 

His virtues and his pills are so well known 
That envy can't confine them under stone. 

Shakespeare, it is declared, once lived in 
the borough of Southwark. Goldsmith prac- 
ticed medicine there. Chaucer came there, with 
his Canterbury Pilgrims, and lodged at the 
Tabard Inn. It must have been a romantic 
place once. It is anything but romantic now. 

Only a few fragments remain of Old St. 
Paul's, — the cathedral that Shakespeare knew, 
— which was burnt down, September 2, 1666. 
Some of them are in the churchyard and 
others are in the crypt. No indication exists 
of the place of the grave of John of Gaunt 
or of that of Sir Philip Sidney. The most 
interesting object that was rescued from the 
old church, at the time of the fire, is the 



LONDON ANTIQUITIES 247 

beautiful marble statue of the poet Donne, 
who had caused himself to be represented by 
a sculptured figure in a shroud. He was Dean 
of St. Paul's, from 1G21 to 1631, dying in 
the latter year, aged fifty-eight. The statue is 
in a niche in the wall, in the south aisle of the 
chapel, and you will not see it unless you ask 
the privilege, the gate of that chancel being 
customarily kept locked. 



XVII. 
RELICS OF BYRON. 

In the summer of 1877 an exhibition of 
relics of the poet Byron was, for a brief time, 
visible, in London, at the Albert Memorial 
Hall. The design of erecting a public monu- 
ment to Byron had previously been projected, 
and a numerous committee of influential per- 
sons, — including Disraeli, Matthew Arnold, 
Lord Houghton, Swinburne, Wilkie Collins, 
and the American poets Bryant and Long- 
fellow, — had effectively labored for its fulfil- 
ment. Models of statuary had been solicited 
and obtained, and one of them had been 
selected. The exhibition comprised seventy- 
four objects associated with the poet, mostly 
pieces of his personal property, and thirty- 
nine models for his monument. The relics, 
exclusive of busts and large paintings, were 

248 



RELICS OF BYRON 249 

enclosed in three glass cases, and by their vari- 
ety, singularity, and suggestiveness of associa- 
tion they constituted a unique display, at once 
impressive and pathetic. One of them was 
a little locket, known to have been habitually 
worn by Byron, made of gold and shaped like 
a heart. Another was a crucifix, said to have 
been found in his bedroom at Missolonghi, 
after his death, — a fabric of ebony and metal, 
the upright shaft being about ten inches long, 
and the figure of Christ, and also cross-bones 
and a skull, at the feet of that figure, being 
of bronze. Still another was a huge wineglass, 
given by Byron to his butler, at Newstead 
Abbey, in 1815. Four articles of head-gear 
were conspicuous in one of the cabinets, two 
of them being helmets that Byron wore when 
in Greece, in 1824: one of them is, in color, 
light blue, the other dark green; both are 
embellished with bronze ornaments, and of both 
the aspect is faded. Near them were two of 
the poet's caps, — one designated a " boarding- 
cap," made of leather, trimmed with green velvet 
and studded with brass nails; the other made 



250 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

of green velvet, encircled by a band of gilt 
braid and fronted with a large visor. The lat- 
ter of those caps, which was worn by Byron 
when in Italy, appears in one of Count D'Or- 
say's well-known sketches of him, and that 
sketch happened to be included in the exhibition. 
Among the trinkets were a gold ring, taken 
from the poet's hand, after death; a stout little 
silver watch, the face of it marked with Arabic 
numerals, that he carried when at school, at 
Harrow; two snuff-boxes; a meerschaum pipe, 
slightly colored by use, — though Byron was not 
a smoker; and the collar of his dog Boatswain 
(the animal whose monument and epitaph can 
be seen in the ruined part of £\ T ewstead), this 
relic being a circlet of brass, with sharply 
jagged points, turned outward. Five pieces 
of Byron's hair, two of them in one locket, 
supplied a particularly interesting feature of 
the memorial display. One of them, tied with 
a thread of white silk, had been loaned to the 
exhibition by Captain Edward John Trelawny, 
the astonishing person who states, in his book 
of "Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley 



RELICS OF BYRON 251 

and Byron" (1858) that he uncovered the corpse 
of Byron in order "to confirm or remove my 
doubt as to the cause of his lameness" — that is, 
to ascertain, as subsequently he promulgated, 
the nature and extent of that physical deform- 
ity which embittered Byron's mind, and which, 
probably, was a principal incentive to his 
reckless conduct of life. All those tresses 
were considerably faded, presenting, in color, 
a mixture of auburn and gray. Byron's hair, 
apparently, was not of fine texture, and it 
must have turned gray early, seeing that he 
died in his thirty-seventh year. A specially 
significant relic (remembering that the poet 
was bred a Calvinist, and that he never 
entirely escaped from the trammels of that 
injurious form of superstition) was a copy of 
the New Testament, given to him by the pious 
gentlewoman whom he married, and by him 
given to Lady Caroline Lamb: it is a small 
volume, bound in black leather, and upon a 
fly-leaf at the front of it, written in a stiff, 
formal hand, could be read the words: "From 
a sincere and anxious friend." 



252 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

The most remarkable objects shown were 
the manuscripts, — including the original draft 
of the Third Canto of "Childe Harold," 
written on loose sheets, in May and June, 
1816, and in that form sent to John Mur- 
ray, for publication; the first draft of the 
Fourth Canto of that wonderful poem, together 
with a copy of it, in Byron's hand, and the 
letter of dedication to Hobhouse, afterward 
Lord Broughton, — the best friend that the poet 
ever had, and, as his writings show, one of the 
wisest and best of men; the author's Notes to 
his favorite tragedy, "Marino Faliero"; the 
closing "stage directions," a blotted scrawl, to 
his dramatic poem called "Heaven and Earth"; 
a document that he wrote, in 1817, relative to 
his domestic troubles; and about twenty of his 
letters. The passages of "Childe Harold" that 
could be read, through the glass which covered 
them, are those beginning: "Since my young 
days of passion — joy, or pain," Canto iii. 
stanza 4; "To bear unbent what Time cannot 
abate," canto iii., stanza 7, changed, in the 
printed copy, to "In strength to bear what Time 



RELICS OF BYRON 253 

cannot abate"; and, in Canto Fourth, stanzas 
118 to 129 inclusive, — beginning "Here didst 
thou dwell, in this enchanted cover," and end- 
ing "Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages 
are its dower." The hand- writing, obviously 
that of a nervous, impetuous person, agitated 
and in tumultuous haste, is firm and free, and 
it remains legible, upon paper that is yellow 
with age. Those manuscripts seemed touch- 
ingly expositive of the genius, the wretched 
experience, the suffering, and the turbulent 
career of their marvellous and most unfortunate 
writer. No person acquainted with Byron's 
story and appreciative of his works could look, 
without mingled wonder and pity, upon relics 
thus intimately associated with one of the 
greatest poets that have ever lived. 

The collection of memorials was still further 
augmented by Thorwaldsen's noble bust of 
Byron, made for Hobhouse; the bust carved 
by Bartolini, approved by the Countess Guic- 
cioli as a faithful portrait; and the superb 
painting by Thomas Phillips, which hangs in 
the great hall of Newstead Abbey, and which 



254 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Sir Walter Scott, who well knew the poet's 
face, declared to be the best likeness of liim 
ever made. George Cattermole's sketch of him 
was also shown, — a picture which signifies, on 
the part of the artist, a sympathetic compre- 
hension of the subject, for it expresses a daunt- 
less spirit shining through sorrow: but no 
enthusiast of Byron, who has seen the Phillips 
portrait, as it looks at the observer from the 
wall at Newstead, could be quite content with 
any other. The London monument to Byron, 
a statue by Richard Belt, was placed and 
dedicated in May, 1880, in Hamilton Gardens, 
near Hyde Park Corner, within view of the 
house, No. 139 Piccadilly, in which Byron and 
his wife resided, in which their daughter, 
Ada, was born, and in which they parted, 
never to meet again. That statue presents a 
seated figure, of the young sailor species. The 
right hand is raised, to support the chin, while 
the left hand, resting on the left knee, holds an 
open book and a pencil. The attitude is sup- 
posed to illustrate the stanza of "Childe 
Harold" beginning "To sit on rocks, to muse 




LORD BYRON 



Musi wretched men 
Ave cradled into poetry by wrong; 
They Irani in sufering what they teach in song. 

SHELLEY. 



RELICS OF BYRON 255 

o'er flood and fell." The dress consists of a 
loose shirt or jacket (when in Italy he often 
wore a tartan jacket, of the Gordon plaid), 
that garment open at the throat and on the 
bosom, a flowing neck-cloth, and trousers wide 
at the foot. The subject is treated in a free, 
bold manner, and with skill, and the work has 
the merit of romantic charm, but it does not 
impart a just sense of Byron's stalwart intel- 
lect and character. He was a very great 
poet, — a great sinner and a great sufferer. "He 
did strange things," one Englishman said to 
me, "and there was something queer about 
him," — meaning, perhaps, a taint of lunacy: 
facile explanation of all departure from the 
conventional standard ! 

In 1877 the house in which Byron was 
born, No. 24- Holies Street, Cavendish Square, 
was standing, and it had been marked by a 
tablet, bearing his name and the dates of his 
birth and death: 1788-1824. It was occupied, 
at that time, by a descendant of Elizabeth 
Fry, the philanthropist. In 1890 it was torn 
down, and the site of it is covered now by a 



256 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

huge shop. When Byron was at school in 
Dulwich Grove, his mother lived in a house in 
Sloane Terrace. Other London houses asso- 
ciated with liim are No. 8 St. James Street; 
a lodging in Bennett Street; No. 2 The 
Albany, — a lodging that he rented of Lord 
Althorpe, and moved into on March 28, 
1814, and where he wrote "The Corsair" 
and "Lara" ; and No. 139 Piccadilly. The latter 
house, which I had the pleasure of visiting, 
before it had undergone any alteration, was 
once the residence of that fine scholar and 
journalist, the genial Sir Algernon Borth- 
wick, now deceased. John Murray's house, 
from which most of B)Ton's works were sent 
forth and in which his Autobiography w r as 
burned, is extant, unchanged, in Albemarle 
Street. Byron's body, when brought home 
from Greece, lay in state, at No. 25 Great 
George Street, Westminster, before being 
taken north to Hucknall-Torkard church, in 
Nottinghamshire, for burial. Such are a few 
of the London associations with his illustrious 
name. 



XVIII. 

HIGHGATE AND COLERIDGE. 

One of the most impressive of the many 
literary pilgrimages that I made in London and 
its neighborhood was that which brought me to 
the house in which Coleridge died, and the place 
where he was buried. The student needs not 
to be told that this poet, born in 1772, the 
year after Gray's death, bore the white lilies 
of pure literature till 1834, when he also entered 
into rest. The last nineteen years of the life 
of Coleridge were passed in a house at High- 
gate, and there, within a few steps of each 
other, the visitor can see his dwelling and his 
tomb. The house is one in a block of dwell- 
ings, situated in what is called the Grove, — 
a broad, embowered street, a little way from the 
centre of the village. There are gardens 
attached to those houses, both in the front and 

257 



258 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the rear, and the smooth, peaceful roadside 
walks in the Grove itself are pleasantly shaded 
by elms of noble size and abundant foliage. 
Those were young trees when Coleridge saw 
them, and all this neighborhood, in his day, 
was thinly settled. Looking from his chamber 
window he could see the dusky - outlines of 
sombre London, crowned with the dome of 
St. Paul's, on the southern horizon, while, more 
near, across a fertile, smiling valley, the gray 
spire of Hampstead church would bound his 
prospect, rising above the verdant woodland 
of Caen. In front were beds of flowers, and 
he could hear the songs of birds that filled the 
fragrant air with careless music. Not far 
away stood the old church of Highgate, long 
since destroyed, in which he used to worship, 
and close by was the Gate House Inn, primi- 
tive, quaint, and cosey, which still is standing, 
to comfort the weary traveller with its hos- 
pitality. Highgate, however rural, must have 
been a lively place in former times, for all the 
travel went through it that passed either into 
or out of London by the great north road, — 



HIGHGATE AND COLERIDGE 259 

that road in which Whittington heard the pro- 
phetic summons of the bells, and where can 
be seen, suitably and rightly marked, the place 
of the stone on which he sat, to rest. At 
Highgate the coaches were stopped, to change 
horses, and there the many neglected little 
taverns still remaining, with odd names and 
swinging signs, testify to the discarded cus- 
toms of a bygone age. Some years ago a 
new road was made, so that travellers might 
wind around the hill, and avoid climbing the 
steep ascent to the village, and since then grass 
has grown in the streets. But such bustle as 
once enlivened the solitude of Highgate could 
never have been other than agreeable to its 
inhabitants; while for Coleridge, as can be 
imagined, the London coach was welcome 
indeed, that brought to his door such loved 
friends as Charles Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, 
Crabb Robinson, Wordsworth, and Talfourd. 
"Come in the first stage" (so he wrote, to 
Crabb Robinson, — that "mine of memories," — 
in June, 1817), "so as either to walk, or be 
driven in Mr. Gilman's gig, to Caen Wood and 



260 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

its delicious groves and alleys, the finest in 
England, a grand cathedral aisle of giant lime- 
trees." 

To that retreat the author of "The Ancient 
Mariner" retired, in 1815, to live with his friend 
James Gilman, a doctor, who had undertaken 
to rescue him from the demon of opium. It 
was his last refuge, and he never left it till 
he was released from life. As you ramble in 
that quiet neighborhood your fancy will not 
fail to conjure up his placid figure, — the silver 
hair, the pale face, the great, luminous, change- 
ful, blue eyes, the somewhat portly form, 
clothed in black raiment, the slow, feeble walk, 
the sweet, benignant manner, the voice that 
was perfect melody, and the inexhaustible talk 
that was the flow of a golden sea of eloquence, 
learning, and wisdom. Coleridge was often 
seen walking there, with a book in his hand, 
and the children of the village knew and loved 
him. His presence is impressed upon the place, 
to haunt and to hallow it. He was a very 
great man. The wings of his imagination wave 
easily in the opal air of the highest heaven. 




SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 



capacious soul! 
Placed on this earth to love and understand 

And from thy presence sited the lit/lit of love. 

WORDSWORTH. 



HIGHGATE AND COLERIDGE 261 

The power and majesty of his thought are 
such as irresistibly establish in the human mind 
the conviction of personal immortality. Yet, 
how forlorn the ending of his days! For more 
than thirty years Coleridge was the slave of 
opium. It blighted his home; it alienated his 
wife; it ruined his health; it made him utterly 
wretched. "I have been, through a large por- 
tion of my later life," he wrote, in 1834, 
"a sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, 
languor, and manifold infirmities." But, more 
afflicting and harder to bear, was he not the 
victim of some ingrained perversity of the 
mind, some helpless, hopeless irresolution of 
character, some enervating spell of that sub- 
lime yet pitiable dejection of Hamlet, which 
kept him always at war with himself, and, 
finally, cast him out upon the homeless ocean 
of despair, to drift away into ruin and death? 
There are shapes more saddening than his, in 
the records of literary history, — the ravaged, 
agonizing form of Swift, and the proud, deso- 
late face of Byron; but there is no figure 
more pathetic. 



262 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

In that way the memory of Coleridge came 
upon me, standing at his grave. He should 
have been laid in some wild, free place, where 
the grass could grow above him and the trees 
could wave their branches over his head. He 
was placed in a ponderous tomb, of gray stone, 
in Highgate churchyard, and a new building 
has been reared above it (the grammar-school 
of the village) so that now the tomb, fenced 
round with iron, is in a cold, barren, gloomy 
crypt, accessible, indeed, from the churchyard, 
through several arches, but grim and doleful 
in its surroundings, as if the cruel fate that 
marred his life were still triumphant over his 
ashes. 

Among the most imaginative and affecting 
of the poems of Wordsworth there is one, con- 
cerning the burial of Ossian, that glances at 
the theme of fitness in a place of sepulchre. 
Not always, for the ashes of famous persons, 
has the repository been well chosen. The lover 
of the poetry of Shelley and of Keats reflects, 
with a sense of its peculiar propriety, on their 
entombment within the hallowed precincts of 



HIGHGATE AND COLERIDGE 263 

poetic Rome. It is felt to be right that the 
dust of Dean Stanley should rest with that of 
poets and of kings; and to see, as I did, only a 
little while ago, fresh flowers on his tomb in 
the Abbey, was to be conscious of solemn con- 
tent. The sight of Shakespeare's grave, in the 
chancel of Stratford Church, awakens the same 
tender sentiment, and it is with kindred emotion 
that you linger at the peaceful resting place 
of Gray: but surely it is pitiful that poor 
Letitia Landon should have been laid beneath 
the pavement of a barrack, in a strange coun- 
try, far from the violets and roses of the Eng- 
land she loved so well. It might almost be 
thought that the evil spirit of calamity, which 
follows certain persons throughout the whole 
of life, had pursued them even in death, to 
haunt their repose and to mar all the gentle- 
ness of association that ought to hallow it. 
Chatterton, a pauper and a suicide, was 
huddled into a workhouse graveyard, the 
place of which has been obliterated and is 
unknown. Otway, miserable in his love for 
the beautiful actress Elizabeth Barry, died in 



264 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

abject penury, and was buried in a vault 
beneath the church of St. Clement Danes, in 
the middle of the Strand, where there is no 
rustle of green leaves, and where the tumult 
of the great city is at its height. Henry 
Mossop, one of the stateliest of stately actors, 
in the brilliant period of Garrick and Foote, 
perished of poverty and grief, and was laid 
to rest in a dismal churchyard at Chelsea. 
Theodore Hook, one of the brightest spirits 
of his time, or of any time, who filled every 
hour with the sunshine of wit and was degraded 
and ruined by his own brilliancy, rests under 
the shadow of Fulham church, in one of the 
dreariest spots in the suburbs of London. It 
does not much signify, perhaps, when the play 
is over, in what place the relics of our mor- 
tality are bestowed; and yet, to most human 
beings, those relics seem sacred, and many a 
fond heart, in all the continuity of time, will 
choose a scene of beauty, and therefore of 
peace, for the interment of the dead. There 
is neither peace nor beauty at the grave of 
Coleridge. 



XIX. 

BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 

In England, as elsewhere, every historic 
spot is occupied, and it sometimes happens, at 
such a spot, that its association is marred and 
its sentiment almost destroyed by the presence 
of the persons and the interests of to-day. 
The visitor to such places must carry with 
him not only knowledge and sensibility but 
imagination and patience. He will not find the 
way strewn with roses, nor the atmosphere of 
poetry ready-made for his enjoyment. That 
atmosphere, indeed, for the most part, espe- 
cially in the cities, he must himself supply. 
Relics do not robe themselves for exhibition. 
The Past is utterly indifferent to its wor- 
shippers. Many little obstacles will arise before 
the pilgrim, to thwart him in his search. The 
mental strain and bewilderment, the inevitable 

265 



266 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

physical weariness, the soporific influence of the 
climate, the tumult of the streets, the disheart- 
ening spectacle of poverty, squalor, and vice, 
the capricious and untimely rain, the incon- 
venience of long distances, the ill-timed arrival 
and consequent disappointment, the occasional 
nervous sense of loneliness and insecurity, the 
inappropriate boor, the ignorant, garrulous 
porter, the extortionate cabman, and the jeer- 
ing bystander, — all these must be regarded 
with resolute indifference by him who would 
ramble, pleasantly and profitably, in the foot- 
prints of English history. Everything depends 
upon the eyes with which you observe and the 
spirit which you impart. Never was a more 
significant truth uttered than in the couplet 
of Wordsworth: 

Minds that have nothing to confer 
Find little to perceive. 

To the philosophic stranger, however, even 
the prosaic occupancy of historic places is not 
without its pleasurable, because humorous, 
meaning. Such an observer in England will 



BARNET BATTLE-FIELD 207 

sometimes be amused as well as impressed by 
a sudden sense of the singular incidental posi- 
tion into which, — partly through the lapse of 
years, and partly through a peculiarity of 
national eharaeter, — the scenes of famous events, 
not to say the events themselves, have gradually 
drifted. I thought of this one night, when, in 
Whitehall Gardens, I was looking at the statue 
of King James the Second, and a courteous 
policeman came up and silently turned the 
light of his "bull's-eye" on the inscription. A 
scene of more incongruous elements, or one 
suggestive of a more serio-comic contrast, could 
not he imagined. I thought of it again when 
standing on the village green of Barnet, and 
viewing, amid surroundings both pastoral and 
ludicrous, the column which there commemo- 
rates the defeat and death of the great Earl of 
Warwick, and, consequently, the final triumph 
of the Crown over the last of the great Barons 
of England. 

It was toward the close of a cool summer 
day, and of a long drive through the beautiful 
hedgerows of sweet, verdurous Middlesex, that 



268 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

I came to the villages of Barnet and Hadley, 
and went over the field of Kins Edward's 
victory, — that fatal, glorious field, on which 

Glo'ster showed such resolute valor, and where 
Warwick, dauntless and magnificent in disaster, 
fought on foot, to make sure (if all were to 
be lost) that himself might go down in the 
stormy death of all his hopes. More than 
four hundred years have drifted by since that 
misty April morning when the star of War- 
wick was quenched in blood, and ten thousand 
men were slaughtered to end the strife between 
the Barons and the Crown; yet the results of 
that conflict are living facts in the government 
of England now, and in the fortunes of her 
inhabitants. If you were unaware o( the solid 
simplicity anil proud reticence oi 1 the English 
character, — leading it to merge all its shining 
deeds in one continuous fabric of achievement, 
like jewels set in a cloth o\' gold, — you might 
expect to find this spot adorned with a struc- 
ture o^ more than common splendor. The 
mark that you do find there is a plain monu- 
ment, standing in the middle of a common, at 



BARNET BATTLE-FIELD 269 

the junction of several roads, — the chief of 
which are those leading to Hatfield and St. 
Albans, in Hertfordshire, — and on one side of 
that column you can read, in letters of 
faded black, the comprehensive statement that 
"Here was fought the famous battle between 
Edward the Fourth and the Earl of War- 
wick, April 14th, anno 1471, in which the 
Earl was defeated and slain." 

In my reverie, standing at the foot of that 
weather-stained monument, I saw the long 
range of Barnct hills, mantled with grass and 
flowers and with the golden haze of a morn- 
ing in spring, swarming with gorgeous horse- 
men and glittering with spears and banners; 
and I heard the vengeful clash of arms, the 
horrible neighing of maddened steeds, the furi- 
ous shouts of onset, and all the nameless cries 
and groans of battle, commingled in a hideous 
yet thrilling din. Here rode the handsome, 
stalwart, intrepid King Edward, with his proud, 
cruel smile and his long yellow hair; there War- 
wick swung his great, two-handed sword, and 
mowed his foes like grain; and there the fiery 



270 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

form of Richard, splendid in burnished steel, 
darted like a scorpion, dealing death at every 
blow, till, at last, in fatal mischance, the sad 
star of Oxford, assailed by its mistaken friends, 
was swept out of the field, and the fight drove, 
raging, into the valleys of Hadley. How 
strangely, though, did this fancied picture con- 
trast with the actual scene before me! At a 
little distance, all around the village green, the 
embowered cottages kept their peaceful watch. 
Over the careless, straggling grass went the 
shadow of a passing cloud. Not a sound was 
heard, except the rustle of leaves and the low 
laughter of some little children, playing near 
the monument. Close by and at rest was a flock 
of geese, couched upon the cool earth, and, 
as is the custom of those birds, supremely con- 
tented with themselves and the world: and at 
the foot of the column, stretched out at full 
length, in tattered garments that scarcely cov- 
ered his nakedness, reposed a British laborer, 
fast asleep upon the sod. No more Wars of the 
Roses now, but calm retirement, smiling plenty, 
cool western winds, and sleep and peace. 



XX. 

STOKE-POGIS AND GRAY. 

It is a cool afternoon in July, and the 
shadows are falling eastward on fields of wav- 
ing grain and lawns of emerald velvet. Over- 
head a few light clouds are drifting, and the 
green boughs of the great elms are gently 
stirred by a breeze from the west. Across one 
of the more distant fields a large flock of 
rooks, some of them fluttering and cawing, 
wings its melancholy flight. There is the sound 
of the whetting of a scythe, and, near by, 
the twittering of many birds upon a cottage 
roof. On either side of the country road, 
which runs like a white rivulet through banks 
of green, the hawthorn hedges are shining and 
the bright sod is spangled with all the wild- 
flowers of an English summer. An odor of 
lime-trees and of new-mown hay sweetens the 

271 



272 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

air, for miles around. Far off, on the horizon's 
verge, just glimmering through the haze, rises 
the imperial citadel of Windsor, and elose by 
the roadside a little child points to a gray spire 
peering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me that 
this is Stoke-Pogis church. 

If peace dwells anywhere upon the earth its 
dwelling-place is here. You come into this 
little churchyard by a pathway across the park 
and through a wooden turnstile, and in one 
moment the world is left behind and forgotten. 
Here are the nodding elms; here is the yew- 
tree's shade; here "heaves the turf in many a 
mouldering heap." All these graves seem very 
old. The long grass waves over them, and 
some of the low stones that mark them are 
entirely shrouded in ivy. Many of the "frail 
memorials" are made of wood. None of them 
is neglected or forlorn, but all of them seem 
to have been scattered here, in that sweet dis- 
order which is the perfection of rural loveliness. 
There never could have been any thought of 
creating this effect, yet here it remains, to 
win your heart: and here, amid tliis mournful 




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STOKE-POGIS AND GRAY 273 

beauty, the little church nestles close to the 
ground, while every tree that waves its 
branches around it, and every vine that clam- 
bers on its walls, seem to clasp it in the 
arms of love. Nothing breaks the silence 
but the sighing of the wind in the great yew- 
tree at the church door, — beneath which was 
the poet's favorite seat, and where the brown 
needles, falling, through many an autumn, have 
made a dense carpet on the turf. Now and then 
there is a faint rustle in the ivy; a fitful bird- 
note serves only to deepen the stillness; and 
from a rose-tree near at hand a few leaves 
flutter down, in soundless benediction on the 
dust beneath. 

Gray was laid in the same grave with his 
mother, "the careful, tender mother of many 
children, one alone of whom," as he wrote 
upon her gravestone, "had the misfortune to 
survive her." Their tomb, — a low, oblong, 
brick structure, covered with a large slab, — 
stands a few feet away from the church wall, 
upon which is a tablet to denote its place. 
The poet's name has not been inscribed above 



274 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

him. There was no need here of "storied urn 
or animated bust." The place is his monument, 
and the solemn Elegy, — giving to the soul of 
the place a form of seraphic beauty and a 
voice of celestial music, — is his immortal 
epitaph. 

There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, 
By hands unseen are showers of violets found; 

The redbreast loves to build and warble here, 
And little footsteps lightly print the ground. 

There is a monument to Gray, in Stoke 
Park, about two hundred yards from the 
church, but it seems commemorative of the 
builder rather than the poet. They intend 
to set a memorial window in the church, to 
honor him, and the visitor finds there a money- 
box for the reception of contributions in aid 
of this good design. Nothing will be done 
amiss that serves to direct closer attention to 
his life. It was one of the best lives ever 
recorded in the history of literature, because 
it was pure, noble, and beautiful. In two 
qualities, sincerity and reticence, it was exem- 
plary almost beyond a parallel; and those are 



STOKE-POGIS AND GRAY 275 

qualities that literary character, in the pres- 
ent day, has great need to acquire. Gray 
was averse to publicity. He did not sway 
by the censure of other men, neither did he 
need their admiration as his breath of life. 
Poetry, to him, was a great art, and he 
added nothing to literature until he had made 
it as nearly perfect as it could be made by 
the thoughtful, laborious exertion of his best 
powers, superadded to the spontaneous impulse 
and flow of his genius. More voluminous 
writers, Charles Dickens among the rest, have 
sneered at him because he wrote so little. The 
most colossal form of human complacency is 
that of the individual who thinks all other 
creatures inferior who happen to be unlike 
himself. Reticence on the part of Gray was, 
in fact, the emblem of his sincerity and one 
compelling cause of his imperishable renown. 
There is a better thing than the great man who 
is always speaking, and that is the great man 
who only speaks when he has a great word to 
say. Gray has left only a few poems, but of 
his principal works each is supreme in its kind. 



876 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

He did not test merit by reference to ill- 
formed, capricious public opinion, but he 
wrought according to the highest standards of 
art that learning ami taste could furnish. His 
letters form an English classic. There is no 
purer prose in existence; there is not much 
that is as pure. But the crowning glory of 
Ci ray's nature, the element that makes it so 
impressive, the charm that brings the pilgrim 
to Stoke- Togis church to muse upon it, was 
the self-poised, sincere, lovely exaltation o\' its 
contemplative spirit. He was a man whose 
conduct of life would, first of all. purify, 
expand, and adorn the temple o\' his soul, out 
of which should, afterward, freely flow those 
choral harmonies that soothe, guide, and exalt 
the human race. He lived before he wrote. 
The soul of the Elegy is the soul of the man. 
It was his thought, — which he has somewhere 
expressed in better words than these, — that 
human beings are only at their best while 
such feelings endure as are engendered when 
death has just taken from them the object of 
their love. That was the point of view from 









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STOKE-POGIS AND GRAY 277 

which, habitually, he looked upon the world; and 
no man who has learned the lessons of experi- 
ence can doubt that he was right. 

Gray was twenty-six years old when he 
wrote the first draft of the Elegy. lie began 
that poem in 1742, at Stoke-Pogis, and he 
finished and published it in 1751. No visitor 
to this churchyard can miss either its inspira- 
tion or its imagery. The poet has been dead 
more than a hundred years, but the scene of 
his rambles and reveries has suffered no 
material change. One of his yew-trees, indeed, 
much weakened with age, was some time ago 
blown down in a storm, and its fragments 
were carried away. The picturesque manor 
house, not far distant, was once the home of 
Admiral Perm, father of William Penn, the 
famous Quaker. All the trees of the region 
have grown and expanded, — including the 
neighboring beeches of Burnham, among which 
he loved to wander, and where he might often 
have been found, sitting at some gnarled 
wreath of "old fantastic roots"; but in its gen- 
eral characteristics, its rustic homeliness and 



278 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

peaceful beauty, this "glimmering landscape," 
immortalized in his verse, is the same on which 
his living eyes have looked. There was no 
need to seek for him in any special spot. The 
house in which he once lived might, no doubt, 
be discovered; but every nook and vista, every 
green lane and upland lawn and ivy-mantled 
tower of this delicious solitude is haunted with 
his presence. William Penn and his children 
are buried in a little Quaker graveyard, at a 
place called Jordan's, not many miles from 
Stoke. The visitor to Stoke-Pogis should 
not omit a visit to Upton church, Burnham 
village, and Binfield. Pope lived in Binfield 
when he wrote his poem on Windsor Forest. 
Upton claims to have had a share in the inspira- 
tion of the Elegy, but Stoke-Pogis was Gray's 
place of residence when he wrote it. Langley 
Marish ought to be visited also, and Horton, — 
where Milton wrote "L'Allegro," "II Pen- 
seroso," and "Comus." Chalfont St. Peter is 
accessible, where still is standing the house in 
which Milton finished "Paradise Lost" and 
began "Paradise Regained," and from there 



STOKE-POGIS AND GRAY 279 

a short drive will take you to Beaconsfield, 
where you can see Edmund Burke's tablet, 
in the church, and the monument to Waller 
in the churchyard. 

The night is coming on and the picture 
will soon be dark, but never, while memory 
lasts, can it fade out of the heart. What 
a blessing would be ours, if only we could 
hold forever that exaltation of the spirit, that 
sweet resignation, that pure freedom from all 
the passions of humanity and all the cares of 
life, which come upon us in such a place as 
the scene of Gray's immortal poem! But that 
is impossible. Even with the thought this 
golden mood begins to melt away; even with 
the thought comes our dismissal from its influ- 
ence. Nor will it avail us now to linger at 
the shrine. Fortunate is he, though in bereave- 
ment and regret, who parts from beauty while 
yet her kiss is warm upon his lips, — waiting 
not for the last farewell word, hearing not the 
last notes of the music, seeing not the last 
gleam of sunset, as the light dies from the sky. 
It was a sad parting, but the memory of the 



280 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

place can never be despoiled of its loveliness. 
As I write these words I stand again in the 
cool, dusky silence of the poet's church, with 
its air of stately age and its fragrance of clean- 
liness, while the light of the western sun, 
broken into rays of gold and ruby, streams 
through the painted windows and softly falls 
upon the quaint little galleries and decorous 
pews; and, looking forth through the low, 
arched door, I see the dark, melancholy boughs 
of the dreaming yew-tree, and, nearer, a 
shadow of rippling leaves in the clear sunshine 
of the churchyard path: and all the time a 
gentle voice is whispering, in the chambers of 
thought : 

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, — 

(There they alike in trembling hope repose) 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 




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XXI. 

A GLIMPSE OF ELY. 

Gray and sombre London, gloomy beneath 
vast clouds of steel and bronze, is once more 
left. Old Highgate flits by and we roll through 
the network of little towns that fills all the 
space between Hornsey and Tottenham. The 
country along our course is one of exceptional 
interest, and but that Buggins the Builder has 
marred it, by making the houses alike, it would 
be one of peculiar beauty. Around Totten- 
ham the dwellings are interspersed with 
meadows, and there are market-gardens and 
nurseries of flowers, — the bright green of 
carrot-tops and of the portly cabbage being 
pleasantly relieved by masses of brilliant holly- 
hock. Broad fields ensue, cultivated to the 
utmost and smiling with plenty, and around 
some of the houses there are beautiful green 

281 



282 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

lawns, divided with hedges of hawthorn. The 
country, for the most part, is level, and a 
fine effect is produced upon the landscape by 
single tall trees or by isolated groups of them, 
especially where the plain slopes gently toward 
gleaming river and bird-haunted vale. Every- 
where the aspect is that of prosperity and 
bloom. The sun has pierced the clouds and is 
faintly lighting with a golden haze this shadowy 
summer scene of loveliness and peace. In 
the distance are several small streams, dark, 
bright, and still, and near them many white 
and brown cattle, conspicuous in a sudden 
burst of sunshine, are couched under the trees. 
A little canal-boat, gayly painted, red and 
green, moves slowly through the plain, and 
over the harvest fields the omnipresent rook 
wings a solemn flight or perches on the yellow 
sheaves. Chingford has been left to the east, — 
where you can explore one of the most pic- 
turesque ruined churches in England, and 
where they show you a hunting-lodge that once 
was owned and used by Queen Elizabeth, — 
and Enfield has been left, to the west, where 



A GLIMPSE OF ELY 283 

the nettles grow rank on the low grave of 
Charles Lamb, within the shadow of the dark 
chureh-tower that reverberated with his funeral 
knell. White Webs has been passed, with its 
associations of Father Barnet and of the Gun- 
powder Plot, and passed also is Ponder's End, 
with its relics and memories of the baleful 
Judge Jeffreys. At Rye House the pilgrim 
remembers the plan that was hatched there to 
murder King Charles the Second, and thinks 
of the miserable death of Lord William Ilus- 
sell upon the block in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
Bishop's Stortford brings thought of the cruel 
Bishop Bonner. But the beauty of nature 
triumphs over the depravity of man, and in 
this verdant, blooming region itself there is 
no hint of a wicked heart or a sinister action. 
The church at Bishop's Stortford crowns a 
fine eminence, and near that place an old 
brick windmill and many black cattle make 
a striking picture in the gentle landscape. The 
pretty villages of Stanstead and Elsenham 
glide by, and, as they pass, the wanderer's gaze 
rests dreamily on tiny red cottages with lich- 



284 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

ened roofs, and on the broad, fertile farms 
that surround them. Between Audley End 
and Cambridge there is a long stretch of 
country that contains only farms and villages, 
— the cultivation of the land being thorough 
and the result a picture of contentment and 
repose. Presently the country grows more 
hilly, and under clouds of steel the landscape 
is swept by a cool, fragrant wind, bringing 
dashes of sudden rain. Hedges are abundant. 
Many flocks of sheep are seen in the pastures. 
Fine farm-houses appear and signs of opulence 
are all around them. Wooden windmills rise, 
picturesque upon the heights, and the eye rests 
delightedly on long rows of the graceful Lom- 
bardy poplar. White roads are visible, here 
and there, winding away into the distance, and 
many kinds of trees abound; yet everywhere 
there is an ample prospect. At Shelf ord comes 
a burst of sunshine, and looking toward the 
horizon I see tall trees that stand like sentinels 
around the lovely plain of classic Cambridge, 
where soon I am to wander among such stately 
haunts of learning as will fire the imagina- 



A GLIMPSE OF ELY 285 

tion and fill the memory with scenes of majesty 
and thoughts of intellectual achievement and 
renown that words are powerless to describe 
or express. But the aspect of Cambridge, as 
now we glide along its margin, gives no hint 
of the magnificence within its borders. Beyond 
it, still flying northward, we traverse a flat 
country and see long roads bowered with trees, 
deep emerald verdure, banks of white daisies 
and red clover, gardens brilliant with scarlet- 
runners, sunflowers, and marigolds, rooks at 
their customary occupation of feeding, — provi- 
dent, vigilant, sagacious, and singularly humor- 
ous, — artistic forms of hay-ricks, some circular, 
some cone-shaped, some square with bevelled 
edges, and in the long, yellow fields the mow- 
ers at their work, some swinging their scythes 
and some pausing to rest. Those, and others 
like them, are the laborers whose slow, patient 
toil, under guidance of refined taste, has gradu- 
ally transformed much of England into a gar- 
den of beauty and delight, for in every part 
of that country industry is incessant, and hand- 
in hand with industry goes thrift. 



286 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

A vast gray tower rising superbly out of 
a dense mass of green, glistening foliage, a 
gray spire near at hand, visible amid a cluster 
of red and wrinkled roofs, and over all a flood 
of sunshine, — and this is Ely! I had not been 
an hour in the town before I had climbed to 
the summit of the western tower of the cathe- 
dral, and gazed out upon the green and golden 
plains of Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and North- 
ampton, lit by the afternoon sun and blazing 
with light and color, for thirty miles around. 
Far to the northwest you can just discern 
the black tower of Peterborough. North and 
east, at a still greater distance, a dim gray 
shape indicates the ramparts of Norwich. 
Thirty miles northward rise the spires of Lynn. 
Those you cannot see, but the wash of the 
Northern Ocean breaks in music on that 
delicious coast, and the wild sea-breeze, sweep- 
ing over the moors and fens, cools the whole 
land and stirs its sun-lit foliage till it seems 
to sparkle with joyous life. The Ouse winds 
through the plain, at some distance, south and 
east, — dark and shining in the glow of the 



A GLIMPSE OF ELY 287 

autumn afternoon, — while, gliding between 
hedges, in the west and south, come little rail- 
way trains, from Cambridge and Saint Ives. 
Nearer, far below, and nestling around the 
great church, are the cosey dwellings of the 
clean, quiet town, — one of the neatest, most 
orderly, most characteristic towns in England. 
Houses, streets, and trees commingle in the 
picture, and you discern that the streets are 
irregular and full of pleasing curves, the build- 
ings being mostly made of light-gray or tawny 
yellow brick, and roofed with slate or with 
brown tiles that the action of the weather has 
curiously wrinkled and the damp has marked 
with lichen and moss. At this dizzy height 
you are looking down even upon that colossal 
octagon tower, the famous lantern of Ely 
(built by Prior Alan de Walsingham, a little 
after 1322), which is one of the marvels of 
ecclesiastical architecture. It is a prospect at 
once of extraordinary rural sweetness, religious 
pomp, and august, solemn antiquity. It is a 
pageant of superb modern civilization and 
refinement, and yet, as you gaze upon it, you 



288 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

forget all that is contemporary, and seem to 
be standing among the phantom shapes and 
in the haunted cloisters of the Middle Ages. 
Each of the great abbeys of England has 
its distinctive character. The beauty of Ely 
is uniqueness combined with magnificence. 
That cathedral is not only glorious, it is also 
strange. The colossal porch, the stupendous 
tower, the long nave with its marvellous painted 
ceiling, the vast central octagon, the uncommon 
size and the unusual position of the Lady 
Chapel, the massive buttresses, the delicate 
yet robust beauty of the flanking turrets, the 
wealth of carved niches and pinnacles, — all 
those elements of splendor unite to dazzle the 
vision and overwhelm the mind. Inside the 
church there is nothing to obstruct your view 
of it, from end to end; the Gothic architecture 
is not overladen, as in so many other cathedrals 
in Europe, with inharmonious Grecian monu- 
ments; and when you are permitted to sit 
there, in the stillness, with no sound of a 
human voice and no purl of theological prattle 
to call you back to earth, you must indeed be 



A GLIMPSE OF ELY 289 

hard to impress if your thoughts are not centred 
upon heaven. It is the preacher, in his showy 
vestments, it is man, with his vanity and folly, 
that humiliates the reverent pilgrim, in such 
holy places as this, by insistent contrast of 
conventional littleness with all that is celes- 
tial in the grand architectural results of the 
inspiration of genius. When I remember 
what glorious places have been almost ruined 
for me by incessant human gabble I know 
not whether the sentiment that predominates 
is resentment or despair. But for every true 
worshipper the moment of solitude comes, 
and with it comes the benediction of beauty. 
During some part of the night I stood at 
a window, in the Lamb, and looked at the 
great cathedral, silent and sombre under 
the cold light of the stars. The wind was 
blowing, fresh and strong. The streets were 
deserted. The lights had been put out and the 
people had gone to rest. But it did not seem 
that the ancient church is a dead thing, or that 
slumber ever comes to it, or weakness, or for- 
getfulness. It keeps an eternal vigil, watch- 



290 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

ful over the earth and silently communing 
with heaven; and as I gazed upward at its 
fretted battlements I could almost see the 
wings of angels waving in the midnight air. 

It is early morning now, and across a lovely 
blue sky float thin clouds of snowy fleece, 
while many rooks soar above the lofty towers of 
Ely, darting into crevices in its gray crown, 
or settling upon its parapets, with a hoarse, 
querulous croak. The little town has not yet 
awakened. Nothing is stirring except a few 
dead leaves that the wind has blown down 
over night, and that are now wildly whirled 
along the white, hard, cleanly streets. The 
level on which this ancient settlement rests 
is so even and so extensive that from almost 
any elevation you can see the tree-line on the 
distant horizon. Some of the houses have 
doors and shutters of yellow oak. The narrow 
causeways are paved with smooth gray stone 
or slate. Not many lattices or gables are 
visible, such as the traveller often sees in 
Canterbury or Winchester, nor is there in Ely 
such a romantic street as the exquisite Vicar's 



A GLIMPSE OF ELY 291 

Close, at Wells; but bits of old monastic archi- 
tecture are numerous, — arched gateways fretted 
by time, shields of stone, carved entablatures, 
and broken gargoyles, — curiously commingled 
with the cottage ornamentation of modern day. 
On the long village-green in front of the Cathe- 
dral stands a handsome piece of ordnance that 
was captured at Sebastopol, — peaceful enough 
now, before the temple of the Prince of Peace. 
At a little distance rises the spire of St. 
Mary's, a gray relic of the thirteenth century, 
remarkable for its door-arches of blended Nor- 
man and early English art. Close at hand is 
the venerable Tudor palace, which for more 
than four centuries has been inhabited by the 
bishops of Ely, and upon some part of which 
may have rested the gaze of that astute states- 
man, Bishop Morton, who "fled to Richmond," 
and whose defection wrought the political ruin 
of King Richard the Third. Every way you 
turn and everywhere you ramble there is some- 
thing to inspire historic interest or awaken 
thought. Even as Glastonbury, upon the golden 
plain of Somerset, was once the Isle of Avalon, 



202 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

so this place, lonely among the fens of Eastern 
Anglia, was once the Isle of Ely. It is more 
than twelve hundred years since the resolute 
devotion of a chaste, noble woman made this 
a sacred spot, and if storied Ely taught no 
other lesson and gave no other comfort it would, 
at least, — as a commemorative monument to 
the Saxon princess Ethelryth, — admonish us 
that life is capable of higher things than mortal 
love, and that the moat celestial of women is 
the woman who is sufficient unto herself. 



XXII. 

STRATFORD REVISITED. 

Night, in Stratford-upon-Avon — a summer 
night, with large, solemn stars, a cool, fragrant 
breeze, and the stillness of perfect rest. From 
a high, grassy bank I look forth across the 
darkened meadows and the smooth, shining 
river, and see the little town where it lies 
asleep. Hardly a light is anywhere visible. 
A few great elms, near by, are nodding and 
rustling in the wind, and once or twice a 
drowsy bird-note floats up from the neighbor- 
ing thicket that skirts the vacant, lonely road. 
There, at some distance, are the dim arches of 
Clopton's Bridge. In front, — a shapely mass, 
indistinct in the starlight, — rises the fair Memo- 
rial, Stratford's pride. Further off, glimmer- 
ing through the tree-tops, is the dusky spire 
of Trinity, keeping its sacred vigil over the 

293 



294 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

dust of Shakespeare. Nothing here is changed. 
The same tranquil beauty, as of old, hallows 
this place; the same sense of awe and mys- 
tery broods over its silent shrines of ever- 
lasting renown. Weary the time has been 
since last I saw it, but to-night remembered 
only as a fleeting, troubled dream. Here, 
once more, is the noblest companionship the 
world can give. Here, once more, is the almost 
visible presence of the magician who can 
lift the soul out of the weariness of com- 
mon things and give it strength and peace. 
The old time has come back, and the bloom 
of the heart that I thought had all faded 
and gone. I stroll again to the river's brink, 
and take my place in the boat, and, trailing 
my hand in the dark waters of Avon, forget 
every trouble that ever I have known. 

It is often said, with reference to memo- 
rable places, that the best view always is the 
first view. No doubt the accustomed eye sees 
blemishes. No doubt the supreme moments 
of human life are few and come but once, 
and neither of them is ever repeated. Yet 



STRATFORD REVISITED 295 

frequently it will be found that the change is 
in ourselves and not in the objects we behold. 
Scott has glanced at this truth, in a few mourn- 
ful lines, written toward the close of his heroic, 
beautiful life. Here at Stratford, however, I 
am not conscious that the wonderful charm 
of the place is in any degree impaired. The 
town still preserves its old-fashioned air, its 
quaintness, its cleanliness and order. At the 
Shakespeare cottage, in the stillness of the 
room where he was born, the spirits of mys- 
tery and reverence still keep their imperial 
state. At the ancient Grammar- School, with 
its pent-house roof and its dark sagging rafters, 
you still can see, in fancy, the unwilling school- 
boy gazing upward absently at the great, 
rugged timbers, or looking wistfully at the 
sunshine, where it streams through the little 
lattice windows of his prison. New Place, 
with its lovely lawn, its spacious garden, the 
ancestral mulberry and the ivy-covered well, 
will bring the poet before you, as he lived 
and moved, in the meridian of his greatness. 
There he blessed his young daughter, on her 



896 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

wedding day: their his eves closed in the hist 
sleep: and from that place he was carried 
to his grave in the old church. I pass once 

again through the fragrant avenue o\' limes. 

the silent churchyard, the dim porch, the twi- 
light of the venerable temple, ami kneel above 
the ashes of Shakespeare. What majesty in 
this triumphant rest! All the great labor 
accomplished; the universal human heart inter- 
preted with a living voiee: the memory and 
the imagination of mankind stored forever 
with words of sublime eloquence and images 
of immortal beauty; the noble lesson o( self- 
conquest, — of the entire adequacy of the reso- 
lute, virtuous, patient human will,— set forth so 
grandly that all the world must see its mean- 
ing; ami. last of all. death shorn of its terror. 
The custodian at New Place will show the 
little museum that is kept there. — including 
a shovel-hoard from the old Falcon tavern, 
which once stood across the way. on which the 
poet might have played,- and will lead you 
through the gardens, anil descant on the many 
associations of the place. There is a fresh. 



STRATFORD REVISITED 297 

fragrant beauty about these grounds, a charm- 
ing atmosphere of sunshine, comfort, and ele- 
gance. The custodian of New Place has the 
keys of the guild chapel, opposite, on which 
Shakespeare looked, from his windows and 

his garden, and in which he was the holder 

of two sittings. Sou will enter it by the 
porch through which he walked, and see the 

arch and columns and tall, muUioned win- 
dows on which his gaze has often rested. The 
interior is cold and barren now, for the 
scriptural wall-paintings that once adorned it 
hare been removed, and the wooden pews, which 
are modern, have not yet been embrowned by 
age. Vet that church, deemed one of Shake- 
speare's haunts, will hold you with the stron- 
gest tie of reverence and sympathy. At his 
birthplace everything remains unchanged. The 
ceiling of the room in which the poet was 
bom is, indeed, slowly crumbling to pieces. 
Every morning little particles of the plaster 
are found Upon the floor. The area of tiny 
iron laths, to sustain it, has more than doubled 
since I first saw it. In the museum ball, once 



298 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the Swan Inn, they have formed a library; 
and there you can see at least one Shake- 
spearean relic of extraordinary interest, — that 
manuscript letter of Richard Quiney (whose 
son Thomas became, in 1616, the husband of 
Shakespeare's youngest daughter, Judith) ask- 
ing the poet for the loan of thirty pounds. It 
is enclosed between plates of glass, in a frame, 
and usually it is kept covered with a cloth, so 
that the sunlight will not cause the ink to fade. 
The date of that letter is October 25, 1598, and 
thirty English pounds then was a sum equiv- 
alent to about six hundred dollars of American 
money now. That is the only letter known to 
be in existence that Shakespeare received. Miss 
Caroline Chattaway, the younger of the ladies 
who long kept this house, was accustomed to 
recite its text from memory, — giving an old- 
fashioned flavor to its quaint phraseology, as 
rich as the odor of wild thyme and rosemary 
growing in her garden beds. Such an antique 
touch adds a wonderful charm to the relics of 
the past. I found it once more when sitting 
in the chimney-corner of Anne Hathaway s 



STRATFORD REVISITED 299 

kitchen, and again in the lovely little church 
at Charlecote, where a simple, kindly woman, 
not ashamed to reverence the place and the 
dead, stood with me, at the tomb of the Lucy 
family, and repeated from memory the tender, 
sincere epitaph with which Sir Thomas Lucy 
thereon commemorates his departed wife. The 
lettering is small and indistinct on the tomb, 
but, having often read it, I well knew how cor- 
rectly it was then spoken: nor shall I ever read 
it again without thinking of that pleasant voice, 
the hush of the empty church, the afternoon 
sunlight streaming through the oriel window, 
and, — visible through the doorway arch, — the 
roses waving among the churchyard graves. 

In the days of Shakespeare's youth a fourth 
part of England was a wilderness, and the 
population of the country did not exceed five 
millions of persons. The Stratford-upon-Avon 
of to-day is still possessed of some of its 
ancient features, but the region round about 
it then must have been rude and wild, in com- 
parison with what it is at present. If you 
walk in the footpath to Shottery now you 



300 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

will pass between low fences and along the 
margin of gardens, — now in the sunshine, and 
now in the shadow of larch, chestnut, and 
elm, while the sweet air blows upon your face 
and the expeditious rook makes rapid wing to 
the woodland, cawing as he flies. In the old 
cottage, with its roof of thatch, its crooked 
rafters, its odorous hedges and climbing vines, 
its leafy well and its tangled garden, every- 
thing remains the same. There are the ancient 
carved bedstead, in the garret, the wooden 
settle by the kitchen fireside, the hearth at 
which Shakespeare sat, the great blackened 
chimney with its adroit iron "fish-back" for 
the better regulation of the tea-kettle, and 
the brown and tattered Bible containing the 
Hathaway family record. Sitting in an old 
armchair, in the corner of Anne Hathaway's 
bedroom, I could hear, in the perfumed sum- 
mer stillness, the low twittering of birds, whose 
nest is in the covering thatch and whose songs 
would awaken the sleeper at the earliest dawn. 
A better idea can be obtained in that cottage 
than in either the birthplace, or any other 




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5 »~~'.3'' ~ 



« I 2 6 

s ^5 S © 



E-i c-h ^-t E~i 



STRATFORD REVISITED 301 

Shakespearean haunt, of what the actual life 
of the common people of England was, in 
Shakespeare's day. The stone floor and oak 
timbers of the Hathaway kitchen, stained and 
darkened in the slow decay of three hundred 
years, have lost no particle of their pristine 
character. In such a nook the inherited habits 
of living do not alter. "The thing that has 
been is the thing that shall be," and the cus- 
toms of long ago are the customs of to-day. 

The Red Horse Hotel, formerly managed 
by Mr. Gardner, who owned it in Washington 
Irving's day, has been inherited by his nephew, 
William Gardner Colbourne, under whose 
direction, however, it has not parted with either 
its antique furniture or its delightful ways. 
The mahogany and wax-candle period has not 
yet ended in that happy place, and you sink 
to sleep on a snow-white pillow, soft as down 
and fragrant as lavender. One change is 
remarked. They have made a niche in the 
corner of Washington Irving's parlor, and in 
it have placed his armchair, recushioned and 
polished, and it is sequestered from touch by 



302 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

a large sheet of plate-glass. The relic can 
still be seen, but the pilgrim can sit in it no 
more. "Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre," the poker 
that Irving used, and of which he has face- 
tiously written, is the tenant of a starred and 
striped bag, and keeps its state in the seclusion 
of a bureau ; nor is it shown except upon request. 
One of the strong instincts of the English 
character is that of permanence. It acts 
involuntarily. Institutions seem to have grown 
out of human nature in this country, and are 
as much its expression as blossoms, leaves, and 
flowers are the expression of inevitable law. 
A custom, in England, once established, is 
seldom changed. The brilliant career, the 
memorable achievement, the great character, 
takes a permanent shape, in some kind of out- 
ward, visible memorial, some recognitory fact, 
which thenceforth is an accepted part of the his- 
tory of the land and the experience of its peo- 
ple. England means stability — the fireside and 
the altar; and that is, in part, the explanation 
of the power she wields in the affairs of the 
world and the charm that she diffuses over the 



STRATFORD REVISITED 303 

domain of thought. Such a temple as St. 
Paul's Cathedral, such a palace as Hampton 
Court, such a castle as that of Windsor or that 
of Warwick, is the natural, spontaneous expres- 
sion of the English instinct of permanence; and 
it is in memorials like those that England 
has written her history, with symbols that can- 
not perish. At intervals a latent animal 
ferocity breaks loose, — as it did under King 
Henry the Eighth, under Cromwell, and under 
King James the Second, — and for a brief time 
ramps and bellows, striving to deface and 
deform the surrounding structure of beauty 
that has been slowly and painfully reared out 
of her deep heart and her sane civilization; 
but the tears of human pity soon quench the 
fire of Smithfield, and it is only for a little 
while that Puritan soldiers play at nine-pins 
in the nave of St. Paul's. The fever of animal 
impulse, the wild revolt of petulant impatience, 
is soon cooled; and then the great work goes 
on again, as calmly and surely as before, — 
that great work, of educating mankind to the 
level of constitutional liberty, in which England 



304. SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

has been engaged for well-nigh a thousand 
years, and in which the American Republic, 
though sometimes at variance with her methods 
and her spirit, is, nevertheless, her follower 
and the consequence of her example: for it is 
instructive to remember that, while our Decla- 
ration was made in 1776, the Declaration of 
Right, recognizing the Prince of Orange, is 
dated 1689, the Bill of Rights is dated 1628, 
and Magna Charta was secured in 1215. 

It is difficult to avoid rhapsody, in trying 
to express the feelings that are excited by 
personal contact with relics of Shakespeare, 
the objects that he saw, and the fields through 
which he wandered. Fancy would never tire 
of lingering in that delicious region of flowers 
and of dreams. From the hideous vileness of 
the social condition of London, in the time 
of King James the First, the poet must indeed 
have rejoiced to seek that blooming garden of 
rustic tranquillity. There also he could find 
the surroundings that were essential to sustain 
him amid the vast labors of his final period. 
No man, however great his powers, can escape 



STRATFORD REVISITED 305 

from the trammels under which Nature enjoins 
and permits the exercise of the brain. Ease, 
in the intellectual life, is visionary. The higher 
a man's faculties the higher are his ideals, — 
toward which, under the operation of a divine 
law, he must perpetually strive, but to the 
height of which he will never absolutely attain. 
So, inevitably, it was with Shakespeare. But, 
although genius cannot escape from itself and 
is no more free than the humblest toiler in the 
vast scheme of creation, it can, — and it must, — 
sometimes escape from the world: and that 
wise poet, of all men else, would surely recog- 
nize and strongly grasp the great privilege 
of solitude amid soothing adjuncts of natural 
beauty. That privilege he found in the spark- 
ling and fragrant gardens of Warwick, the 
woods and fields and waters of Avon, where 
he had played as a boy, and where love had 
laid its first kiss upon his lips and poetry 
first opened upon his inspired vision the eter- 
nal glories of her celestial world. It still 
abides there, for every gentle soul that can 
feel its influence, — to deepen the glow of noble 



306 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

passion, to soften the sting of grief, and to 
touch the lips of worship with a fresh sacra- 
ment of patience and beauty. 

AT SHAKESPEARE'S GRAVE. 

No eyes can see man's destiny completed 

Save His, who made and knows th* eternal plan : 

As shapes of clouds in mountains are repeated, 
So thoughts of God accomplished are in man. 

Here the divinest of all thoughts descended ; 

Here the sweet heavens their sweetest boon let fall ; 
Upon this hallowed ground begun and ended 

The life that knew, and felt, and uttered all. 

There is not anything of human trial 

That ever love deplored or sorrow knew, 

No glad fulfilment and no sad denial, 

Beyond the pictured truth that Shakespeare drew. 

All things are said and done, and though forever 
The streams dash onward and the great winds blow, 

There comes no new thing in the world, and never 
A voice like his, that seems to make it so. 

Take, then, thy fate, or opulent or sordid, 
Take it and bear it and esteem it blest; 

For of all crowns that ever were awarded, 
The crown of simple patience is the best. 

Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, 
1889. 



I 



XXIII. 

HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE. 

On the night of November 4, 1820, a brutal 
murder was done, at a lonely place on the high- 
road between Charlecote Park and Stratford- 
upon-Avon. The victim was a farmer, named 
William Hirons. The next morning the mur- 
dered man was found lying by the roadside, 
his mangled head resting in a small hole. 
(The assassins, four in number, named Adams, 
Hawtrey, Sidney, and Quiney, were shortly 
afterward discovered, and they were hanged 
at Warwick, in April, 1821.) From that day 
to this the hole wherein the dead man's head 
rested remains unchanged. No matter how 
often it may be filled, whether by wash of 
heavy rains or by stones and leaves that way- 
farers may happen to cast into it as they pass, 
it is soon found to be again empty. No one 

307 



308 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

takes care of it. No one knows whether or 
by whom it is guarded. Fill it at nightfall, and 
you will find it empty in the morning. That 
is the local affirmation. This spot is two miles 
and a half north of Stratford and three-quarters 
o^ a mile from the gates of Charleeote Park. 
I looked at this hole one bright summer day 
and saw that it was empty. Nature, it is 
thought by the poets, abhors complicity with 
the concealment of crime, and brands with a 
curse the places that are linked with the shed- 
ding of blood. In Hood's poem of "Eugene 
Aram" it is written: 

A mighty wind had swept the leaves, 
And still the corse was bare. 

There are other haunted spots in Warwick- 
shire. The benighted peasant does not linger 
on Ganerslie Heath. — for there, at midnight, 
dismal bells have been heard to toll, from 
Blacklow Hill, the place where Sir Piers Gaves- 
ton, the corrupt, handsome, foreign favorite 
of King Edward the Second, was beheaded, 
by order of the grim barons whom he had 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 300 

insulted and opposed. The Earl of Warwick 
led them, whom Gaveston called the Black 
Dog of Arden. Everybody knows the his- 
toric incident, but no one can so completely 
realize it as when standing on the spot where 
it occurred. The scene of execution is marked 
by a cross, erected by Mr. Bertie Greathead, 
bearing this inscription: "In the hollow of this 
rock was beheaded, on the First Day of July, 
1312, by Barons lawless as himself, Piers 
Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall. In life and death 
a memorable instance of misrule." Holinshed 
says that the execution occurred on Tuesday, 
June 20. No doubt the birds were singing 
and the green branches of the trees were waving 
in the summer wind, on that fatal day, even 
as they are now. Gaveston was a man of per- 
sonal beauty and of talent, and only twenty- 
nine years old. It was a melancholy sacrifice 
and horrible in the circumstances that attended 
it. No wonder that doleful thoughts should 
come, and blood-curdling sounds, at least in 
fancy, to persons who walk on Ganerslie Heath 
in the lonely hours of the night. 



310 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

Another haunted place is Clopton, — haunted 
certainly by memories if not by ghosts. In 
the reign of King Henry the Seventh this 
was the manor of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord 
Mayor of London, in 1492. The dust of 
Sir Hugh rests in Stratford church and his 
mansion has passed through many hands. Sir 
Arthur Hodgson bought it, in July, 1873. 
It was my privilege to see Clopton under the 
guidance of Sir Arthur, and a charming old 
house it is, fraught with quaint objects and 
singular associations. Among many interesting 
paintings that adorn its walls there is the por- 
trait of a lady, — slight of figure, having long 
auburn hair, delicate features, and a peculiarly 
sensitive expression of face, — said to be that 
of Lady Margaret Clopton, who, in the Stuart 
time, drowned herself in a well, behind the 
mansion, — being crazed with grief because of 
the death of her lover, killed in the Civil 
War; and also there is the portrait of another 
Clopton girl, Lady Charlotte, who is thought 
to have been accidentally buried alive. It 
chanced that the family tomb was opened, a 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 311 

few days after her interment, and the corpse 
was found to be turned over in its coffin and 
to present indications that the wretched victim 
of premature burial had, in her frenzy, gnawed 
her flesh. Her supposed death, attributed to 
the plague, had occurred on the eve of her 
prospective marriage. 

It is a blood-stained corridor in Clopton, 
however, that most impresses imagination. This 
is at the top of the house, and access to it is 
gained by a winding stair, of oak boards, uncar- 
peted, solid, simple, and consonant with the 
times and manners that it represents. Many 
years ago a squire of Clopton (so runs the 
story) murdered his butler, in a little bedroom, 
near the top of that staircase, and dragged the 
body along the corridor, to secrete it. A thin 
dark stain, seemingly a streak of blood, extends 
from the door of that bedroom, in the direction 
of the stairhead, and this is so deeply imprinted 
in the wood that it cannot be removed. Open- 
ing from this corridor, opposite to the room of 
the murder, is an angular apartment, which, 
in remote days of Roman Catholic occu- 



312 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

pancy, was used as an oratory. In the reign 
of King Henry the Sixth, John Carpenter 
obtained from the Bishop of Worcester per- 
mission to establish a chapel at Clopton. In 
1885 the walls of that chapel. — a chamber in 
the attic, — were committed to the care of a 
prper-hanger, who presently discovered on 
them several inscriptions, in black letter, but 
who fortunately mentioned his discovery before 
obliterating the inscriptions. Richard Savage, 
the antiquary, was called to examine them, and 
by him they were restored. The effect of those 
little patches of letters, — islands of meaning 
compassed in a barren sea of wall-paper, — is 
extremely singular. Most of them are sentences 
from the Bible. One imparts the solemn injunc- 
tion: "Whether you rise yearlye or goe to bed 
late, Remember Christ Jesus who died for your 
sake." This can be found in John Weever's 
"Funeral Monuments," 1631. An interesting 
fact in the long and various history of Clopton 
is that, for about three months, in 1605, it was 
occupied by Ambrose Rokewood, of Coldham 
Hall, Suffolk, whom Robert Catesby brought 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 313 

into the ghastly Gunpowder Plot, which so 
startled England, in the reign of King James 
the First. Hither came Sir Everard Digby, 
and Thomas and Robert Winter, and the 
specious Jesuit, Father Garnet, with his train 
of sentimental fanatics, on that pilgrimage of 
sanctification with which he formally prepared 
to attempt an act of hideous treachery and 
wholesale murder. The little oratory of Clop- 
ton must have been in active use at that time. 
Things belonging to Rokewood, who, captured 
at Hewel Grange, was executed on January 31, 
1606, were found therein and seized by the 
government. Mr. Fisher Tomes, resident pro- 
prietor of Clopton from 1825 to 1830, remem- 
bered the inscriptions in the oratory, which in 
his time had not been covered. Not many 
years ago it was a bedroom; but one of Sir 
Arthur Hodgson's guests, who undertook to 
sleep in it, was, it is said, afterward heard to 
declare that he wished not again to experience 
the hospitality of that chamber, because of the 
startling sounds that he heard throughout the 
night. A house containing many rooms and 



814 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

staircases, a house full oi' long - corridors and 
winding ways, a house o( mystery.- -SUCD is 
Clopton. It stands in a large park, seques- 
tered from other buildings ami boweied in trees. 

To sit in the great hall of that mansion, on a 
winter midnight, when the snow-laden wind 
is howling around it. and then to think o( the 
little oratory, ami to imagine stealthy, gliding 
shapes upstairs, invisible to mortal eye. hut 
felt, with a shuddering sense of some unseen 
presence watching in the dark,— this would be 
to have a sufficient experience o( a haunted 
house. Sir Arthur Hodgson talked o( the. 
legends of Clopton. - hut with that merry 
twinkle in his eyes which suits well with kindly 
incredulity. 

The manor o( Clopton was granted to John 
de Clopton by Peter de Mont fort. 1286, in 
the reign o{ King Henry the Third, and the 
family o( Clopton dwelt there for more than 
five hundred years. The Cloptons o( War- 
wickshire and those o( Suffolk are o( the same 
family, and at Long Melford. in Suffolk, can 
be found many memorials of it. The famous 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 815 

Sir Hugh died in London, in L496, and was 

hi j lied at St. Margaret's, Loth bury. Joyce, 
or Jocasa, Clopton, born in 1558, became a 
lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, and after- 
ward to Queen Anne, wife of Kin^» James the 
First, and ultimately married George Carcw, 
created Karl of Totnes and Baron Clopton. 
Carew, horn in 1557, the- son of a Dean of 
Exeter, became commander-in-chief in Ireland, 
in the time of Queen Elizabeth. King James 
ennobled him, in 1605, and King Charles the 
First made him Earl of Totnes, in J 025. The 
Karl and his Countess are buried in Stratford 
church, where their marble effigies, recumbent 
in the Clopton pew, are among the finest monu- 
ments of that hallowed place. The Countess 
died in 163G, leaving no children, and the Earl 
thereupon caused all the estates that he had 
acquired by marriage with her to be restored to 
the Clopton family. Sir John Clopton, born 
in 1688, married the daughter and co-heiress 
of Sir Fdward Walker, owner of Clopton in 
the time of King Charles the Second, and it 
is interesting to remember that by him was built 



316 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the well-known house of Stratford, formerly 
called the Shoulder of Mutton, but more 
recently designated the Swan's Nest. (The 
original sign of the Shoulder of Mutton, which 
once hung before that house, was painted by 
Grubb, who also painted the remarkable por- 
trait of the Corporation Cook, which now 
hangs in the town hall of Stratford, — given 
to the borough by the late Henry Graves, of 
London.) Mention is made of a Sir John 
Clopton by whom the well in which Lady Mar- 
garet drowned herself was enclosed; it is still 
called Lady Margaret's Well; a stone, at the 
back of it, is inscribed, "S. J. C. 1686." Sir 
John died in 1692, leaving a son, Sir Hugh, 
who died in 1751, aged eighty. The last Clop- 
ton in the direct line was Frances, born in 
1718, who married Mr. Parthenwicke, and died 
in 1792. 

Clopton House has undergone many changes. 
The north and west sides of the present edifice 
were built in the time of King Henry the 
Seventh. The building was originally sur- 
rounded with a moat. When the moat was 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 317 

disused three "jack bottles" were found in its 
bed, made of coarse glass, and bearing on the 
shoulder of each bottle the crest of John-a- 
Combe. These relics were in the collection of 
Sir Arthur Hodgson. A part of the original 
structure remains, at the back, — a porchway 
entrance, once accessible across the moat, and 
an oriel window at the right of that entrance. 
Over the front window are displayed the arms 
of Clopton, — an eagle, perched upon a tun, 
bearing a shield; and in the gable appear the 
arms of Walker, with the motto, Loyaute mon 
honneur. Sir Edward Walker was master of 
Clopton soon after the Restoration, and by 
him the entrance to the house, which formerly 
was where the dining-room now is, was trans- 
ferred to its present position. It was Walker 
who carried to King Charles the Second, in 
Holland, 1649, intelligence of the execution of 
his father. A portrait of the knight, by 
Dobson, hangs on the staircase wall at Clopton, 
where he died in 1677, aged sixty-five. He 
was Garter-King-at-Arms. His remains are 
buried in Stratford church, with an epitaph 



318 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

over them by Dugdale. Mr. Ward owned the 
estate about 1840, and under his direction many 
changes were made in the old building, — sixty 
workmen having been employed upon it, for 
six months. The present drawing-room and 
conservatory were built by Mr. Ward, and 
by him the whole structure was "modernized." 
There are wild stories that autographs and 
other relics of Shakespeare once existed at 
Clopton, and were consumed there, in a bon- 
fire. A stone in the grounds marks the grave 
of a silver eagle, that was starved to death, 
through the negligence of a gamekeeper, 
November 25, 1795. There are twenty-six 
notable portraits in the main hall of Clopton, 
one of them being that of Oliver Cromwell's 
mother, and another, probably, that of the 
unfortunate, unhappy Arabella Stuart, only 
child of the fifth Earl of Lennox, who died, at 
the Tower of London, in 1615. 

Warwickshire swarmed with conspirators 
while the Gunpowder Plot was in progress. 
The Lion Inn at Dunchurch was the chief 
tryst of the captains who were to lead their 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 319 

forces and capture the Princess Elizabeth and 
seize the throne and the country, after the 
expected explosion, — which never came. And 
when the plot had failed and Fawkes been cap- 
tured, it was through Warwickshire that the 
"racing and chasing" were fleetest and wildest, 
till the desperate scramble for life and safety 
went down in blood, at Hewel Grange. Vari- 
ous houses associated with that plot are still 
extant in the neighborhood of Stratford, and 
when the scene shifts to London and to Gar- 
net's Tyburn gallows, it is easily possible for 
the patient antiquarian to tread in almost every 
footprint of that great conspiracy. 

I was fortunately the bearer of the card of 
the Lord Chamberlain, when following in that 
track, and therefore was favored by the 
beef-eaters who pervade the Tower. Those 
damp and gloomy dungeons were displayed 
wherein so many Jews perished miserably, in 
the reign of King Edward the First; and 
Little Ease was shown, — the cell in which for 
several months Guy Fawkes was incarcerated, 
during Cecil's wily investigation of the Plot. 



320 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

A part of the rear wall has been removed, 
affording access to the adjacent dungeon, but, 
originally, the cell did not give room for a man 
to lie down in it, and scarce gave room for 
him to stand upright. The massive door, of 
ribbed and iron-bound oak, is still solid, though 
worn. A poor, stealthy cat was prowling about 
in those subterranean dens of darkness and 
horror, and was left locked in there when 
we emerged. In St. Peter's, on Tower Green, 
the coffins have been examined of Lovat, 
Kilmarnock, and Balmerino, the Scotch lords 
who perished upon the block, for their com- 
plicity with the rising for the Pretender, 1745- 
'47. The coffins were much decayed. The 
plates can now be seen, in a glass case, on the 
church wall, over against the spot where those 
unfortunate men were buried. One is of lead 
and is in the form of a large open scroll. The 
other two are oval in shape, and made of 
pewter. It is said that the remains of Lord 
Lovat were, soon after his execution, secretly 
removed, and buried at his home near Inver- 
ness, and that the head was sewed to the body. 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 321 

In St. Mary's Church at Warwick the pil- 
grim can see the beautiful Beauchamp chapel, 
in which are entombed Thomas Beauchamp, 
Earl of Warwick, the founder of the church; 
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in whose 
Latin epitaph it is stated that "his sorrowful 
wife, Lastitia, daughter of Francis Knolles, 
through a sense of conjugal love and fidelity, 
hath put up this monument to the best and 
dearest of husbands"; Ambrose Dudley, elder 
brother to Elizabeth's favorite, and known as 
the Good Earl (he relinquished his title and 
possessions to Robert), and that Fulke Grev- 
ille, Lord Brooke, who lives in fame as "the 
friend of Sir Philip Sidney." There are other 
notable sleepers in that chapel. One odd 
epitaph records, of William Viner, steward to 
Lord Brooke, that "he was a man entirely of 
ancient manners, and to whom you will scarcely 
find an equal, particularly in point of liberal- 
ity. . . . He was added to the number of the 
heavenly inhabitants maturely for himself, but 
prematurely for his friends, in his 70th year, 
on the 28th day of April, a.d. 1639." An- 



322 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

other, placed for himself, by Thomas Hewett, 
during his lifetime, humbly describes him as 
"a most miserable sinner." Still another, and 
tliis in quaint verse, by Gervas Clifton, gives a 
tender tribute to Lsetitia, "the excellent and 
pious Lady Lettice," Countess of Leicester, 
who died on Christmas morning, 1634: 

She that in her younger years 

Matched with two great English peers ; 

She that did supply the wars 

With thunder, and the Court with stars; 

She that in her youth had been 

Darling to the maiden Queene, 

Till she was content to quit 

Her favour for her favourite. . . .. 

While she lived she lived thus, 

Till that God, displeased with us, 

Suffered her at last to fall, 

Not from Him but from us all. 

Robert Dudley (1532-1588) was not an 
admirable man, but certain facts of Ms life 
have been misrepresented. He married Amy 
Robsart, daughter of Sir John Robsart, of 
Siderstern, Norfolk, on June 4, 1550, publicly, 
and in presence of King Edward the Sixth. 



HAUNTED WARWICKSHIRE 323 

Amy Robsart never became Countess of Leices- 
ter, but died, in 1560, four years before Dudley 
became Earl of Leicester, by a "mischance," — 
namely, an accidental fall down stairs, — at 
Cumnor Hall, near Abingdon. She was not at 
Kenilworth, as represented in Scott's novel, at 
the time of the great festival in honor of Queen 
Elizabeth, in 1575, because at that time she had 
been dead fifteen years. Dudley secretly mar- 
ried Douglas Howard, Lady Sheffield, in 1571- 
'73, but would never acknowledge her. His 
third wife was the Lsetitia whose affection 
deplores him, in the Beauchamp chapel. 

A noble bust of that fine thinker and exqui- 
site poet Walter Savage Landor is conspicuous 
on the west wall of St. Mary's church. He was 
a native of Warwick and he is fitly commemo- 
rated in that place. The bust is of alabaster 
and is set in an alabaster arch with carved 
environment, and with the family arms dis- 
played above. The head of Landor shows 
great intellectual power, rugged yet gentle. 
Coming suddenly upon the bust, in this church, 
the pilgrim is forcibly and pleasantly reminded 



324 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

of the attribute of gentle reverence in the Eng- 
lish character, which so invariably expresses 
itself, all over this land, in honorable memo- 
rials to the honorable dead. 

No rambler in Warwick omits to explore 
Leicester's hospital, or to see as much as he can of 
the Castle. I walked beneath the stately cedars 
and along the bloom-bordered avenues where 
once Joseph Addison used to wander and medi- 
tate, and traversed those opulent state apart- 
ments wherein so man) T royal, noble, and beauti- 
ful faces look forth from the radiant canvas of 
Holbein and Vandyke. There is a wonderful 
picture, in one of those rooms, of the great 
Earl of Strafford, when a young man, — a face 
prophetic of stormy life, baleful struggles, and 
a miserable fate. You can see there a helmet 
that was worn by Oliver Cromwell, and also 
a striking death-mask of his face, and some of 
the finest portraits that exist of King Charles 
the First. 



XXIV. 

FIRST VIEW OF CANTERBURY. 

One of the most impressive spots on earth, 
and one that especially teaches, with silent, 
pathetic eloquence and solemn admonition, the 
great lesson of contrast, the incessant flow of 
the ages and the inevitable decay and oblivion 
of the past, is the ancient city of Canterbury. 
Years, and not merely days, of residence there 
seem essential to the full comprehension of 
that wonderful place. Yet even an hour passed 
among its shrines will teach you, as no printed 
word has ever taught, the measureless power 
and the sublime beauty of a perfect religious 
faith; while, as you meditate in the shadow of 
the gray Cathedral walls, the pageant of a 
thousand years of history will pass before you 
like a dream. The city itself, with its bright, 
swift river, the Stour, its opulence of trees 

325 



326 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

and flowers, its narrow, winding streets, its 
numerous antique buildings, its many towers, 
its fragments of ancient wall and gate, its 
formal decorations, its air of cleanliness and 
gravity, its beautiful, umbrageous suburbs, — 
where the scarlet of the poppies and the russet 
red of the clover make a vast rolling sea of 
color and of fragrant delight, — and, to crown all, 
its stately character of wealth without ostenta- 
tion and industry without tumult, must prove 
to you a deep, satisfying comfort. But, through 
all this, pervading and surmounting it all, the 
spirit of the place pours in upon your heart 
and floods your whole being with the incense 
and organ music of passionate, jubilant devotion. 
It was not superstition that reared those 
gorgeous fanes of worship which still adorn, 
even while they no longer consecrate, the 
ecclesiastic cities of the Old World. In the 
age of Augustine, Dunstan, and Ethelnoth 
humanity felt, very deeply, a vital need of 
settled reliance on religious faith. The drift- 
ing spirit, worn with sorrow, doubt, and self- 
conflict, longed to be at peace, — longed for a 




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CANTERBURY 327 

refuge equally from the evils and tortures of 
its condition and the storms and perils of the 
world, and out of the ecstatic joy of its new- 
born, passionate, responsive faith, it built and 
consecrated those stupendous temples, — rear- 
ing them with all its love no less than all 
its riches and all its power. There was no 
wealth that it would not give, no toil that 
it would not perform, and no sacrifice that it 
would not make, in the accomplishment of 
its sacred task. It was grandly, nobly, ter- 
ribly in earnest, and it achieved a work that 
is not only sublime in its poetic majesty but 
measureless in the scope and extent of its 
spiritual influence. It has left to succeeding 
ages not only a legacy of permanent beauty, 
not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, 
but an everlasting monument to the loveliness 
and greatness that are inherent in human 
nature. No human being can stand in such 
a building as Canterbury Cathedral without 
feeling a greater love and reverence than he 
ever felt before, alike for God and man. 

On a day when a class of boys of the King's 



328 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

School of Canterbury was graduated I chanced 
to be a listener to the touching sermon that 
was preached before them, in the Cathedral; 
wherein they were tenderly admonished to 
keep unbroken their associations with their 
school-days and to remember the lessons of that 
place. That counsel should have sunk deep into 
every mind. It is difficult to understand how 
any person reared amid such scenes and relics 
could ever cast away their hallowing influence. 
Even to the casual visitor the bare thought of 
the historic treasures that are garnered in this 
temple is sufficient to implant in the bosom 
a memorable, lasting awe. For more than 
twelve hundred years the succession of the 
Archbishops of Canterbury has remained sub- 
stantially unbroken. There have been ninety- 
four "primates of all England," of whom fifty- 
three were buried in the Cathedral, and here 
the tombs of fifteen of them are still visible. 
Here are buried the sagacious, crafty, inflex- 
ible, indomitable King Henry the Fourth, — that 
Hereford whom Shakespeare has described and 
interpreted with matchless eloquence, — and 



CANTERBURY 329 

here, cut off in the morning of his greatness, 
and lamented to this day in the hearts of the 
English people, was laid the body of Edward 
the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valor and 
terrible prowess in war added magnanimity 
in conquest, and whom personal virtues and 
shining public deeds united to make an ideal 
hero of chivalry. In no other way than by 
personal observance of such memorials can his- 
toric reading be invested with a perfect and 
permanent reality. Over the tomb of the Black 
Prince, with its fine recumbent effigy of shining 
brass, hang the gauntlets that he wore; and they 
tell you that his sword formerly hung there, 
but that Oliver Cromwell, — who revealed his 
iconoclastic, unlovely character in making a 
stable of this cathedral, — carried it away. 
Close at hand is the tomb of the wise, just, 
gentle Cardinal Pole, simply inscribed "Blessed 
are the dead which die in the Lord"; and you 
can touch a little, low mausoleum of gray 
stone, in which are the ashes of John Morton, 
that Bishop of Ely from whose garden in 
Holborn the strawberries were brought for 



330 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the Duke of Glo'ster, on the day when he 
condemned the accomplished Hastings. Stand- 
ing there, I could almost hear the resolute, 
scornful voice of Richard, breathing out, in 
clear, implacable accents: 

Ely with Richmond troubles me more near 
Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength. 

The astute Morton, — when the battle of Bos- 
worth had been fought and the royal cause 
had been lost, and Richmond had assumed the 
crown, and Bourchier had died, — was made 
Archbishop of Canterbury, and as such, at a 
great age, he passed away. Not far from his 
place of rest, in a vault beneath the Church 
of St. Dunstan, is the head of Sir Thomas 
More (the body being in St. Peter's, at the 
Tower of London), who, in his youth, had 
been a member of Morton's ecclesiastical house- 
hold, and whose greatness that prelate had 
foreseen and prophesied. Did no shadow of 
the scaffold ever fall across the statesman's 
thoughts, as he looked upon that handsome, 
manly boy, and thought of the passions that 
were raging about them? Morton, aged ninety, 




.//.'// /'■//.!,, 



RICHARD THE THIRD, KING OF ENGLAND 



And all complexions act at once confusedly in him: 

He xtitdieth, striketh, threats, entreats, and looketh mildly (/rim, 

Mistrustfully he trusteth, and he dreadingly doth dare, 

And forty passions in a trice in him consort and square. 

WAR NEE. 



CANTERBURY. 331 

died in 1500; More, aged fifty-five, in 1535. 
Strange fate, indeed, was that, and as inscrut- 
able as mournful, which gave to those who, in 
life, had been like father and son such a 
ghastly association in death! 

St. Dunstan's church was connected with the 
Convent of St. Gregory. The Roper family, 
in the time of King Henry the Fourth, founded 
a chapel in it, in which are two marble tombs, 
commemorative of them, and underneath which 
is their burial vault. Margaret Roper, Sir 
Thomas More's daughter, obtained her father's 
head, after his execution, and buried it there. 
The vault was opened in 1835, — when a new 
pavement was laid in the chancel of this church, 
— and persons descending into it saw the head, 
in a leaden box shaped like a beehive, open 
in front, set in a niche in the wall, behind an 
iron lattice. 

They show you the place where Becket was 
murdered, and the stone steps, worn hollow 
by the thousands of devout pilgrims who, in 
the days before the Reformation, crept up to 
weep and pray at the costly, resplendent shrine 



332 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

of St. Thomas. The bones of Becket (or what 
were supposed to be his bones) were, by com- 
mand of King Henry the Eighth, burnt, and 
scattered to the winds, while his shrine was 
pillaged and destroyed. Neither tomb nor 
scutcheon commemorates him here, but the 
Cathedral itself is his monument. There it 
stands, with its grand columns and glorious 
arches, its towers of enormous size and its long 
vistas of distance, so mysterious and awful, its 
gloomy crypt where once the silver lamps 
sparkled and the smoking censers were swung, 
its tombs of mighty warriors and statesmen, 
its frayed, crumbling banners, and the eternal, 
majestic silence with which it broods over the 
love, ambition, glory, defeat, and anguish of a 
thousand years, dissolved now and ended in a 
little dust! As the organ music died away I 
looked upward and saw where a bird was 
wildly flying to and fro through the vast spaces 
beneath its lofty roof, in the vain effort to 
rind some outlet for escape. Fit emblem of the 
human mind which strives to comprehend and 
to utter the meaning of this marvellous fabric! 



XXV. 

A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

I must become a borrower of the night, 
For a dark hour or twain. 

— Macbeth. 

Midnight has sounded from the tower of 
St. Martin's. It is a peaceful night, faintly 
lit with stars, and in the region round about 
Trafalgar Square a dream-like stillness broods 
over the darkened city, now slowly hushing 
itself to its brief and troubled rest. This is 
the centre of the heart of modern civilization, 
the middle of the greatest city in the world — 
the vast, seething alembic of a grand future, 
the stately monument of a deathless past. 
Here, alone, in my quiet room of this old Eng- 
lish inn, let me meditate a while on some of 
the scenes that are near me, — the strange, 
romantic, sad, grand objects that I have seen, 

333 



334 SIIAKESrEARE'S ENGLAND 

the memorable figures of beauty, genius, and 
renown that haunt this classic land. 

How solemn and awful now must be the 
gloom within the walls of the Abbey! A walk 
of only a few minutes would bring nie to its 
gates, — the gates of the most renowned mau- 
soleum on earth. No human foot to-night 
invades its sacred precincts. The dead alone 
possess it. I see, upon its gray walls, the 
marble figures, white and spectral, staring 
through the darkness. I hear the night-wind 
moaning around its lofty towers and faintly 
sobbing in the dim, mysterious spaces beneath 
its fretted roof. Here and there a ray of star- 
light, streaming through the sumptuous rose 
window, falls and lingers, in mystic gleam, on 
tomb, or pillar, or dusky pavement. Faint 
rustling sounds float from those dim chapels 
where the great kings lie in state, with marble 
etligies recumbent above their bones. At such 
an hour as this, in such a place, do the dead 
come out of their graves . ; The resolute, 
implacable Queen Elizabeth, the beautiful, ill- 
fated Mary, Queen of Scots, — are these, and 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 335 

such as these, among the phantoms that fill 
the haunted aisles? What a wonderful com- 
pany it would be, for human eyes to behold! 
And with what passionate love or hatred, what 
amazement, or what haughty scorn, its mem- 
bers would look upon each other's faces, in 
this miraculous meeting? Here, through the 
glimmering, icy waste, would pass before the 
watcher the august shades of the poets of five 
hundred years, — Chaucer, Spenser, Jonson, 
Beaumont, Dryden, Cowley, and their tuneful 
brotherhood, children of genius, that here 
mingled with the earth. The grim Edward, 
who ravaged Scotland; the blunt, chivalrous 
Henry, who conquered France; the vacillant, 
miserable victim at Pomfret, and the harsh, 
haughty, astute victor at Bosworth; James 
with his babbling tongue, and William with 
his impassive, predominant visage, — they would 
all mingle with the spectral multitude and 
vanish into the gloom. Gentler faces, too, 
might here once more reveal their loveliness 
and their grief, — Eleanor de Bohun, heart- 
broken for her murdered lord; Elizabeth Clay- 



330 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

pole, the meek, merciful, beloved daughter of 
Cromwell: Matilda, wife of King Henry the 
First, and model of every grace and virtue; 
and sweet Anne Neville, bride of the ruthless 
Glo'ster. Strange sights, truly, in the lone- 
some Abbey to-night! 

In the sombre crypt beneath St. Paul's 
Cathedral how thrilling now must be the heavy 
stillness! No sound can enter there. No 
breeze from the upper world can stir the dust 
upon those massive sepulchres. Even in day- 
time that shadowy vista, with its groined 
arches and the black tombs of Wellington and 
Nelson and the ponderous funeral-car of the 
Iron Duke, is seen with a shudder. How 
strangely, how fearfully the mind would be 
impressed, of liim who should wander there 
to-night! What sublime reflections would be 
his, standing beside the ashes of the great 
admiral, and thinking of that fiery, dauntless 
spirit who made the earth and the sea alike 
resound with the splendid tumult of his deeds. 
Somewhere beneath tliis pavement is the dust 
of Sir Philip Sidney, — buried here before the 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 337 

destruction of the old Cathedral, — and here, too, 
is the nameless grave of the mighty Duke of 
Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Shakespeare was 
only twenty-two years old when Sidney fell, at 
Zutphen, and, being then resident in London, 
he might have seen, and doubtless did see, the 
splendid funeral procession with which the body 
of that heroic gentleman, — radiant example of 
chivalry, — was born to the tomb. Hither came 
Henry of Hereford, — returning from exile and 
deposing the handsome, visionary, profligate 
Richard, — to mourn over the relics of his 
father, dead of sorrow for his son's absence and 
his country's shame. Here, at the great age 
of ninety-one, the glorious brain of Wren 
found rest, beneath the stupendous temple 
that himself had reared. The watcher in the 
crypt to-night would see, perchance, or fancy 
that he saw, those figures from the storied 
past. Beneath this roof, — the soul and the 
symbol of sublimity, — are ranged more than 
four-score monuments to heroic martial per- 
sons who died for England, by land or sea. 
Here, also, are gathered, in everlasting repose, 



338 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

the honored relics of men who were famous in 
the arts of peace, — Reynolds and Opie, Law- 
rence and West, Landseer, Turner, Cruik- 
shank, and many more. For fifteen centuries 
a Christian church has stood upon this spot, 
and through it has passed, with organ strains 
and glancing lights, a long, gorgeous procession 
of prelates and statesmen, of poets, warriors, 
and kings. Surely this is hallowed, haunted 
ground! Surely to him the spirits of the 
dead would he very near, who, alone, in the 
darkness, should stand to-night within those 
sacred walls, and hear, beneath that awful 
dome, the mellow thunder of the bells of God. 
How looks, to-night, the interior of the 
chapel of the Foundling Hospital? Dark and 
lonesome, no doubt, with its heavy galleries 
and sombre pews, and the great organ that 
Handel gave, standing there, mute and grim, 
between the tiers of empty seats: but never, in 
my remembrance, will it cease to present a 
picture more touching than words can say. 
Scores of white-robed children, rescued from 
penury by this noble benevolence, were ranged 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 339 

around that organ when I saw it, and, in 
their artless little voices, singing a hymn of 
worship. More than a century and a half has 
passed since this refuge was established, — the 
sacred work and blessed legacy of Captain 
Thomas Coram. What a vast good it has 
accomplished, and continues to accomplish, 
and what a pure glory hallows its founder's 
name! Here the poor mother, betrayed and 
deserted, can take her child and find for it a 
safe home and a chance in life, nor will she her- 
self be denied sympathy and help. The poet 
and novelist George Croly was once chaplain 
of the Foundling, and he preached some fine 
sermons there, but those discourses were 
thought to be above the comprehension of his 
usual audience, and he resigned the place. 
Sydney Smith often spoke in that pulpit, when 
a young man. It was an aged clergyman 
who preached there, within my hearing, and I 
remember he consumed almost an hour in 
saying that a good way in which to keep the 
tongue from speaking evil is to keep the heart 
kind and pure. Better than any sermon, 



840 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

though, was the spectacle of those poor chil- 
dren, rescued out o( their helplessness and 

reared ID comfort and rectitude. Several 
superb works o( art are owned by the hos- 
pital, which the visitor can see. — paintings by 
Gainsborough and Reynolds, and a portrait 
of Captain Coram, by Hogarth. May the 
turf lie lightly on him. and daisies and vio- 
lets deck his hallowed grave! No man ever 
did a better deed than he. and the darkest 
night that ever was cannot darken his fame. 
How dim and silent now are all those nar- 
row, quaint little lanes around St. Paul's 
churchyard and the Temple, where Johnson 
and Goldsmith loved to ramble! "More than 
once have 1 wandered there, in the late hours 
of the night, meeting scarce a human creature, 
but conscious o^l a royal company indeed. o{ the 
wits, poets, and players of a far-off time. 
Darkness now. on busy Smithtield. where once 
the cruel flames of bigotry shed forth a glare 
that sickened the light oi day. Murky and 
grim enough to-night is that grand proces- 
il walk in St. Bartholomew's church, with 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 311 

its huge gray pillars and splendid arches of 
the Norman age. Sweet to fancy and dear in 
remembrance, the old church comes back to 

me now, with the sound of the children's 
voices and the wail of the organ. In many 
a park and gloomy square the watcher now 
would hear only a rustling of leaves or the 
casual note of half -awakened birds. Around 
Primrose Hill and out toward Hampsltad 
many a night-walk have I taken, that seemed 
like rambling in a desert, — so dark and still 
were the walled houses, so perfect the soli- 
tude. To walk in Bow Street now, — might 
it not be to meet the shades of Waller and 
Wycherley and Betterton, who lived and died 
there; to have a greeting from the silver- 
tongued Barry; or to see, in draggled lace and 
ruffles, the stalwart figure and flushed face 
of festive, gallant Henry Fielding? Very 
quiet now are those grim stone chambers in 
the terrible Tower of London, where so many 
tears have fallen and so many noble hearts 
been split with sorrow. Does Brakenbury 
kneel in the cold, lonely chapel of St. John, 



342 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

or the sad ghost of Monmouth hover in the 
chancel of St. Peter's? 

How sweet to-night would be the rustle of 
the ivy on the dark walls of Hadley church, 
where late I breathed the rose-scented air and 
heard the warbling thrush, and blessed, with a 
grateful heart, the loving kindness that makes 
such beauty in the world! Out there on the 
hillside of Highgate, populous with death, the 
starlight gleams on many a ponderous tomb 
and the white marble of many a sculptured 
statue, where famous names will lure the 
traveller's footsteps, for years to come. There 
Lyndhurst rests, in honor, and there is hushed 
the tuneful voice of Dempster, — never to be 
heard any more, either when snows are flying 
or "when green leaves come again." Not 
many days have passed since I stood there, by 
the humble gravestone of poor Charles Har- 
court, and remembered the gentle enthusiasm 
with which he spoke to me of the character 
of Jaques, — which he loved, — and how well he 
repeated the immortal lines upon the drama 
of human life. For him the "strange, event- 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 343 

ful history" came early and suddenly to an 
end. In that place, too, I saw the sculptured 
medallion of the well-beloved George Honey, — 
"all his frolic o'er" and nothing left but a 
name. Many a golden moment did we have, 
old friend, and by me thou art not forgotten! 
The lapse of a few years changes the whole 
face of life, but Time cannot take from us 
our memories. Here, around me, in the still 
watches of the night, are faces that will never 
smile again, and voices that will speak no more, 
— Sothern with his silver hair, and bright, 
kindly eyes, from the spacious cemetery of 
Southampton, and droll Harry Beckett, and 
lovely Adelaide Neilson, from dismal Bromp- 
ton. And if I look from the window I 
shall not see the lions of Landseer or the 
vagrant wretches who sleep around them; but, 
high in her silver chariot, encompassed with 
all the pomp and splendor that royal Eng- 
land knows, the beautiful figure of Anne 
Boleyn, moving to her coronation in the 
Abbey, — her dark eyes full of triumph and 
her torrent of golden hair flashing in the sun. 



344 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 

On this spot is written the long, teeming, won- 
derful history of a mighty empire. Here are 
garnered such loves and hopes, such memories 
and sorrows, as can never be spoken. Pass, 
ye shadows! Let the night wane and the 
morning break. 



